Lutz Seiler

Seiler's wonderful autobiographical novel Kruso was a very hard act to follow, and this not-quite-sequel struggles a bit to generate the same sort of excitement. Anarchist squatters in former East Berlin just after the fall of the Wall are interesting, of course, but there isn't quite the same sort of magic in the air as there was on Hiddensee in the summer of 1989. Most of the interest in this book comes not from the life of the central character, the waiter, poet and mason, Carl (who at one point bumps into Edgar, viewpoint character of Kruso, and notes their odd resemblance to each other...), or even from the levitating nanny-goat Dodo, but from Carl's odd status as the adult child of middle-aged parents who have suddenly left home and gone off to build a new life in the West. Seiler uses this to dig into less obvious corners of relations between East and West at the time of the Wende, and into the abrupt way people from the DDR were made to rethink their lives in the new situation.

There is a lot of good stuff about Berlin ca. 1990 and the anarchist bar "Die Assel" (The Woodlouse) on the Oranienburgerstraße, although on balance I would have loved to read more about Walter and Inge and their adventures in Hessen and less about Carl's obviously doomed love-life. But I loved the ending! Slightly disappointing next to Kruso, but in any other context a very good novel.… (more)

Seiler paradoxically sets his reworking of the Robinson Crusoe story on the popular Baltic holiday island of Hiddensee, to the west of Rügen, crowded in the summer of 1989 with holidaymakers, seasonal hotel and restaurant workers, people hoping to leave the DDR illegally via the tantalisingly short sea-crossing to the Danish island of Møn, and heavily-armed border-guards.

Literature student Ed, his Friday-character, arrives on the island after the death of his girlfriend provokes a kind of nervous breakdown. He finds a job washing-up in the kitchen of the Klausner restaurant in the north of the island (a real place that is still in business; Seiler worked there himself in 1989). And he soon forms a kind of spiritual bond with his colleague Alexander Krusowitsch — "Kruso" — the acknowledged leader of the seasonal workers on the island and organiser of their clandestine assistance to the "shipwrecked mariners", the growing body of people who have come to the island because they have in one way or another been swept overboard from the sinking East German state.

The result is a fascinating and quite unique kind of book, part darkly-realistic behind-the-scenes accounts of restaurant work, part dream-laden allegorical account of liberation and redemption against the background of the collapsing state, part tribute to the many brave people who died or ended up in prison as a result of attempting to leave the DDR. The Robinson Crusoe parallel works much better than you might expect. And I was left with an urge to go and see Hiddensee for myself...… (more)

This debut novel by the German lyricist Lutz Seiler was awarded the prestigious Deutsche Buchpreis in 2014. Its protagonist, Edgar Bendler, like the author, is from Gera in Thuringia, in what was then the German Democratic Republic (DDR). Like the author, he takes time off from his university studies to go to Hiddensee, a small island, rich in lore from ancient sagas, located in the far northwest of the country, so far that the Danish island of Møn can be seen (tauntingly) in clear weather. Edgar’s journey has the nature of a flight, an inner emigration. When he arrives, he finds work as seasonal help in the Klausner, an inn (it exists in real life, the author worked there in the fateful summer of 1989) located on the site of an old monastery. There he falls under the influence of the title character, a strong, mystically-inclined child of a Russian general whose lifework is to save the lost, shipwrecked and stranded. Edgar fancies himself Friday to this Robinson Crusoe.
If I had rated this book halfway through, I would have given it three stars (a good book); my admiration grew though as I continued to the end. In the first half, there is little in the way of plot, and even what little there is is often hard to follow because of the author’s elliptical style. Perhaps the key to this poetic prose is Ed’s thought while listening to Kruso: “ Im Kern war alles Haltung, nicht mehr und nicht weniger, eine komplizierte Form der Existenz, zugleich die einzig mögliche” (loc 2896 in the Kindle edition). In retrospect, this half is like a languid, dreamy summer idyll, yet in it important themes such as freedom, loss, commitment and truth are introduced. About 60 percent of the way into the book, a crucial turning point occurs. At the time, it feels like a climax, one wonders if it doesn’t come too early. It does not, as the repercussions of this event are dramatically played out in the rest of the book, as the dissolution of the crew of the insular inn mirrors the breakdown of the DDR.
The book is told in the third person, but consistently from Ed’s point of view, though it is (purposely, I feel) often hard to tell if what is reported are occurrences, dreams, or hallucinations. This switches to the first person in an elegiac epilogue, as the tale is brought to the present.
This coming-of-age, buddy story is rich in literary allusions, not only to Daniel Defoe, but many others, especially Georg Trakl and, toward the end, Novalis, as well as many Biblical references. Is Kruso a Christ-figure? I’m not sure; at very least he is a holy fool. And Edgar sees himself as Job, cast overboard, yet spewed up onto the shore of a strange land with a tale to tell.
I would recommend this to anyone with the patience to stay with a tale that takes a while to unfold, a good grasp of the German language (even then, keep a dictionary close to hand - the book is full of seldom-used yet very concrete words, the kind that poets love and use to great effect), and a desire to gain a unique view of life in the DDR. A very good read.… (more)