New Lives [Deckle Edge] [Hardcover]

Ingo Schulze (Author), John E. Woods (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 21, 2008

East Germany, January 1990. Enrico Türmer, man of the theater, secret novelist, turns his back on art and signs on to work at a newly started newspaper. Freed from the compulsion to describe the world, he plunges into everyday life. Under the guidance of his Mephisto, the ever-present Clemens von Barrista, the former aesthete suddenly develops worldly ambitions even he didn’t know he had.

This upheaval in our hero’s life, mirrored in the vaster upheaval gripping Germany itself after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the birth pangs of a reunified nation, is captured in the letters Enrico writes to the three people he loves most: his sister, Vera; his childhood friend Johann; and Nicoletta, the unattainable woman of his dreams. As he discovers capitalism and reports on his adventures as a businessman, he peels away the layers of his previous existence, in the process creating the thing he has dreamed of for so long—the novel of his own life, in whose facets contemporary history is captured. Thus Enrico comes to embody all the questionable aspects not only of life in the old Germany, but of life in the Germany just taking form.

Once again Ingo Schulze proves himself a master storyteller, with an inimitable power to reconjure the complete insanity of this wildest time in postwar German history. As its comic chronicler, he unfurls a panorama of a world in transformation—and the birth of a new era.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Schulze's dense and beguiling novel about the reunification of Germany consists of the collected works of Enrico "Heinrich" Türmer, a member of the East German intelligentsia. The works are his correspondence with his sister, Vera, with whom he has an incestuous relationship; his best friend, Johann Ziehlke; and his future lover, a photographer named Nicoletta Hanson. The remainder is rounded out by an appendix that contains a novella, plus nitpicking footnotes from Schulze, who casts himself as the volume's editor. As we learn from Türmer's letters, he quits the theater job he'd been given by the state to partner up in running a newspaper. His guide to the new world of capitalism is "Baron" Dr. Clemens von Barrista, a sort of Mephistophelian mini-Soros. Throughout, Schulze captures something ephemeral but critical about how the idealism that brought down the Wall also brought down itself. Or as Türmer remarks about his fellow intellectual dissidents, "Any attention paid to us--the attention that called us onstage--would vanish from the face of the earth" when they succeeded. This novel shows the tragicomic prescience of that remark. (Oct.)
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From Booklist

*Starred Review* This is not Schulze’s first German reunification novel; in Simple Stories (1998), the author offered a fragmented portrait of a transforming Altenburg, a small city near Karl-Marx-Stadt (today, Chemnitz). His latest book may well be Germany’s best reunification novel to date. Returning to Altenburg and to the “discovered manuscript” technique he employed in 33 Moments of Happiness (1995), Schulze gives us the letters of Enrico Turmer, presented as a cautionary tale of a playwright turned newspaper capitalist. The letters—to his childhood friend Johann, his unattainable paramour Nocoletta, and his beloved Westernized sister, Vera—sketch his “descent” into Western values, but, more important, they reveal an aspiring novelist who imbues every social interaction with profound meaning (and, like Felix Krull, occasionally stretches the truth a bit). And thus, against an uncertain East German landscape of ambiguous opportunities—depicted with considerable sensitivity but little Ostalgie—Schulze expertly pulls his readers in opposite directions. Intimate secrets invite us to share Turmer’s idealism; yet the running commentary of the letters’ “editor” enforces distance and states the obvious (perhaps a jab at real-life critics who have criticized Schulze for his obscure references). Exhilarating and perceptive. --Brendan Driscoll

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 592 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; 1 edition (October 21, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0307265595
• ISBN-13: 978-0307265593
• Product Dimensions: 6.4 x 1.4 x 9.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,267,213 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars An important book; definitely merits 5 stars, November 18, 2011

By 

Lost John (Devon, England) - See all my reviews

This review is from: New Lives (Vintage International) (Paperback)

Besides the title and author, the front cover of this volume provides two pieces of information of real importance. They are `A novel' and `"Ingo Schulze is a master story teller" - Günter Grass'. Without affirmation that this is indeed a novel, i.e. a fiction, backed by the imprimatur of no less a master of the art than Günter Grass, even the most careful reader of the Foreword, Editorial Note and opening pages would be likely to fall for the artifice that this is a genuine collection of letters written over a six month period by a now-missing East German playwright cum start-up newspaper entrepreneur, Enrico Türmer.

The six month period chosen is of great significance; it opens in January 1990, two months after the Berlin Wall was breached. Through Türmer keeping one set of correspondents up to date on developments as they happen, and filling-in the background of his life so far to a prospective girlfriend, we acquire a comprehensive picture of what it was like to be an East German citizen during the crucial period when comatose political leadership was challenged and eventually overcome by a rebellious people. For those caught up in events, both before and after the Wall fell, life was chaotic. Schulze gives Türmer a private life that mirrors the public chaos. That seems realistic, and was perhaps inevitable for those who, like Türmer, sought to gain personal advantage from the changed situation, a situation in which they were really only feeling their way around. At the same time as grabbing all he could for himself and those close to him, Türmer retained idealistic ambitions regarding free speech and democracy, initially at least. That too rings true as a representation of the able, ambitious generation unleashed by the revolution.

Türmer had pretensions as a writer of short stories, longer fiction and poetry. Dr Zhivago style, we are given samples in a 95 page appendix to the main text. The stories paint detail into the outlines of the East German experience of childhood and youth provided by the letters, also of the fantasies, grounded in those experiences, of a young person such as Türmer.

This is an important book, definitely worthy of five stars. Be warned, though, that at three times the length of many contemporary novels it is not a quick read.