The Invention of Curried Sausage [Paperback]

Uwe Timm (Author), Leila Vennewitz (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 17, 1997

An ingenious, revealing, and charming tale about the invention of a popular German sidewalk food by a woman who met, seduced, and held captive a deserter in April, 1945, just before the war's end.

The Invention of Curried Sausage is an ingenious, revealing, and delightful novel about the invention of a popular German sidewalk food. Uwe Timm has heard claims that currywurst first appeared in Berlin in the 1950s, but he seems to recall having eaten it much earlier, as a boy in his native Hamburg, at a stand owned and operated by Lena Brücker. He decides to check it out. Although the discovery of curried sausage is eventually explained, it is its prehistory - about how Lena Brücker met, seduced and held captive a German deserter in Hamburg, in April, 1945, just before the war's end-that is the tastiest part. Timm draws gorgeous details from Lena's fine-grained recollections, and the pleasure these provide her and the reader supply the tale's real charm.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

German novelist Timm (Headhunter), who inserts himself as narrator and witness into the plot of this ambitious but flawed work, tracks down Lena Brucker, a blind old woman, in 1989 to verify the rumor that she "invented" curried sausage, a popular German food sold by street vendors. Lena's story, which takes up much of the narrative, goes back to April 1945: as Hitler's dreams of conquest collapse, Lena, then a humble 43-year-old food-service worker in Hamburg, has an affair with Hermann Bremer, 24, a German naval officer and deserter. Both are married. Lena's husband, a smuggler and a naval skipper, has been gone six years, while Hermann conceals the existence of his wife and infant son from his new lover. Writing in taut prose well served by Vennewitz's expert translation, Timm probes the moral ambiguity pervading daily life at a time when ordinary people struggled to survive amid chaos and ruin. Neighbors spy on Lena, whose negative remarks about the Nazis are kept in a Gestapo file ("The Jews are human beings too," reads one of her recorded comments). When Germany surrenders, she is surprised and appalled by newspaper photographs of concentration camp survivors. Timm is trying to tell the tale of Germany's transition from Nazi totalitarianism to the "sweetly pungent anarchy" of modern Germany. To some extent he succeeds, as when he playfully inverts images of blitzkrieg and conquest: "Thus began the triumphal march of the curried sausage, starting from Grossneumarket, then to a stand on the Reeperbahn... Kiel, Cologne, Munster and Frankfurt, but strangely enough stopping at the River Main, where weisswurst held on to its territory." Still, modern German history is a lot of weight to lay on one spicy wurst.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

This clever novel tells the story of how curried sausage (a popular German street food) was created. The narrator is convinced that the delicacy was invented in his native Hamburg sometime during or after World War II, not in Berlin in the 1950s, as is commonly believed. His faint memories from childhood lead him to Lena Bruckner, the curried-sausage street vendor of his youth. He finds her living in a retirement home, and through a series of interviews, she slowly reveals the story behind the creation of curried sausage. And what a story it is! Weaving wartime intrigue, clandestine love affairs, black-market subterfuge, and life during the Nazi era, Lena's story traces the development of the sausage while simultaneously mapping the effects of such diverse elements as war, love, and abandonment on the human spirit. A best-seller in Germany, this highly entertaining, powerful work will dazzle American readers. Kathleen Hughes --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: New Directions (October 17, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0811213684
• ISBN-13: 978-0811213684
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #630,149 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent work, slyly seasoned with metaphor., May 3, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: The Invention of Curried Sausage (Hardcover)

I read this book in its English translation, and I must congratulate the translator, because the imagery and themes shine through the language differences with quite possibly all of the original intent of Mr. Timm. To suggest that somebody could "invent" curried sausage is nearly as ridiculous a premise as suggesting that somebody could "invent" sex, but I believe that's what the author wants us to see here. The magic of inventing the ridiculous, with a farcical sprinkling of the dangerous, is an elixir that in the end helps the protagonists forget that war is hell.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Sausage as one symbol for the end of WWII in Germany, December 5, 2005

By 

Buecherwurm "Saskia" (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Invention of Curried Sausage (Paperback)

Traveling back to his childhood neighborhood, the narrator meets with one of his mother's neighbors, who lived through WWII in Hamburg, one of the most devastated cities in Germany. Already as a child he bought curried sausage (Currywurst) from her - and by trying to unravel how this strange dish came to be, he discovers how one's woman life was changed... A small, poignant novella about love and loss, war and destruction, and the power of human connections...

Uwe Timm is a German novelist and well-known children's book author. With a seemingly simple, but convincing style, he opens a small (fictive?) chapter about German lives at the end of WWII.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A melancholy read of friendship and coincidence, June 8, 2006

By 

Semioticghost "Semioticghost" (London, UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Invention of Curried Sausage (Paperback)

This is a melancholy read of friendship and coincidence. The novel's object is the discoverer of veal sausage with curried ketchup - still one of the most popular burger van menu items in Germany. The circumstances of the discovery, and the narrator's recollections in connection with it, form the frame for a tale of wartime romance against a backdrop of defeat and regeneration at the end of World War II.