The Tango Player (Writings from an Unbound Europe) [Paperback]

Christoph Hein (Author), Philip Boehm (Translator)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

One of East Germany's leading writers, Hein ( The Distant Lover ) critiques the political corruption and patronage system that marked his country's brand of communism during the 1960s. The tersely described life of Dallow, a luckless history professor in Leipzig, receives its dramatic tension from historical events, particularly the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. In a gross miscarriage of justice, Dallow is jailed for performing in a politically subversive cabaret revue--the judge, aware that this professor only accompanied a bunch of rowdy students on the piano, nevertheless decides tomake an example of him. Disoriented and bitter after his 21 months in prison, without even the comfort of thinking himself a dissident, Dallow petitions to get his job back but is rejected. Any sympathy for the unfortunate Dallow diminishes as he lapses into a routine of heavy drinking and one-night stands, while a half-hearted attempt at an affair falters. Pressured to return to the university as an informer, he retreats to a distant resort town where he leads an amiable, rootless existence. But a political purge at his former institute paves the way for his reinstatement there as a professor. The reader is left with the impression that Dallow is--or has become--as morally bankrupt as the system that produced him.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

In this tightly written novel of East Germany in 1968, Hans-Peter Dallow is a Leipzig professor unjustly sentenced for political crimes to 21 months in the "pen." His arrest and the ensuing period of his reentry into East German society might be seen as a Kafkaesque charade were it not so realistic and so well portrayed. While the original German ( Der Tangospieler , 1989) was published before the wall came down, Hein's novel of an unlikely hero unable to deal with his future while the injustice of the past haunts him strangely foreshadows the struggle facing East Germans moving into a free world. A good translation of a very readable novel by a major modern German writer. Recommended for both general audiences and academic collections.
- Ingrid Schierling, Univ. of Colorado at Colorado Springs
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 220 pages
• Publisher: Northwestern University Press (March 2, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0810111160
• ISBN-13: 978-0810111165
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 4.8 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,091,767 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The World of Shallow Dallow, February 16, 2008

By 

Tebes "Buchlieber" (Niagara Region, ON) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Tango Player (Writings from an Unbound Europe) (Paperback)

This is a sad book. There are no heroes, only a grey world, a place where politics has wiped away the character of humanity. The main character, Dallow, moves around in the novel devoid of emotion, of feeling, compassion and sensitivity. He is the void of the GDR personified, engaging in loveless relationships, relating only on the superficial level.

There is a Kafka-esque humor in the book when the reader encounters the two government officials. They are consistently indistinguishible, a Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum pair who harass Dallow into getting back into his old career path following his prison release. ("I was just the Tango player" he constantly reminds the reader).

Strangely enough, this book was written about a time that could be now. Dallow is only physically engaged in his various sexual encounters. He is isolated from others, his relationship with his parents pointless and weary. In our time and place, we have ipods and cell phones to isolate us. Tear back the layers of our digital distractions and we'll find Dallow in our modern world. This book is haunting if you can stand back and see how it compares to our new century.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Disgrace" in Communist East Germany, November 1, 2000

By 

Manuel Haas - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Tango Player (Writings from an Unbound Europe) (Paperback)

Why should one read books about a political system that is dead and gone? The answer is, of course, that it is not so dead and gone after all. Communism may have collapsed as a political force, but the countries of eastern Europa are still full of the people it has created. People who have just been released from prison are like an ownerless dog, Hein's narrator says, constantly looking for a new master to caress and beat them. Maybe that is how quite a lot of people feel after the Iron Curtain has come down... Peter Dallow has just been released from prison in the East Germany of 1968; he had played the piano in a political cabaret, and a tango about the ageing ruler of the country had so infuriated the authorities that all members of the group are sentenced to spend two years in prison. Dallow still feels he was innocent, because he wasn't even a member, he had just stepped in for the man who usually played the piano. Hein's book is about the months after Dallow's release from prison.

The mood is similar to the one in Coetzee's "Disgrace": Dallow used to be a lecturer at Leipzig university, and his attitude towards his students seems to have been one of contempt and cynicism. Now he is in a state of disgrace, people feel uneasy in his presence and want to get rid of him. The Communist state, however, will not let go of him: The authorities, the secret service, the police, are annoyed that Dallow does not want to live on as if nothing had happened. Nobody could escape the system, no matter how hard he or she tried. Actually they keep trying to force Dallow to return to his post at the university. Maybe people like him are even more useful for a dictatorship than those who never got into trouble: Dallow is broken and cynical, he will never resist the government again; in contrast to practically all the people around him he is completely indifferent towards the hope for reform embodied in the Prague Spring.

Dallow's perspective offers a shocking picture of the state of human relationships in his country: Here too cynicism abounds. Love is only mentioned once - as an impossible dream. Sex is regarded as a purely physical need ("I feel like having sex with you."), and young girls gladly trade it for a place to spend the night. People leave each other just like that. Most characters seem to be scarred after lost battles. This, of course, is Dallow's perspective, and he refuses to cherish any hopes at all. Maybe Hein wanted to show what East Germany was like without the hope for change. The book was first published in 1989, when this change was finally happening...

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Case Study In Grey, October 2, 2006

By 

J. G. Herbst (Bucks County, PA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Tango Player (Writings from an Unbound Europe) (Paperback)

In the "Tango Player" Christoph Hein skillfully adumbrates the grey atmosphere of East German society. While not as engrossing as his "Distant Lover," which I'd easily recommend over this work, "Tango Player" is still a well-written and interesting glimpse into the former East Germany. In 1968, a year of remarkable political tumult, one would expect the main character, Peter Dallow, a historian, to be fully engaged in the events of his times. Instead we see through Dallow a refractory image of 1968: disengaged, socially sclerotic, and remarkably apolitical, even after being released from prison for taking part in the performance of what the State considered a defamatory song. This is one of Hein's greatest strengths: making the observations of alienated eyes somehow sympathetic. Not that Dallow is a sympathetic character, but he makes sense because Hein is so skilled.