An impeccable man

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An impeccable man (original title: Old Filth ) is a novel by the British writer Jane Gardam . It was first published in the UK in 2004 and was translated into German by Isabel Bogdan in 2015 . While Gardam is a widely read author in the UK and is the only author to have received the Whitbread Book Award twice, it is only her second narrative work that has been translated into German.

The novel is part of a trilogy that explores the effects of the British Empire on British colonial families. The most important protagonists of the novel are so-called Raj orphans : children who are sent back to Great Britain alone at a young age by their families living in the colonies and who grow up there in foster families, separated from their parents. They are all marked by the trauma of this separation. Gardam dedicated the novel to these Raj orphans and their children.

In 2005 the novel was nominated for the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction , but lost to Lionel Shriver's novel We need to talk about Kevin in the award . In 2015, however, 82 international literary critics and scholars voted An Impeccable Man one of the most important British novels .

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The novel depicts the life of Edward Feathers in flashbacks. The main character of the novel is introduced through a short dialogue at the beginning of the novel. Young colleagues observe the now over eighty-year-old former lawyer and judge, comment on his impeccable demeanor, his elegant but old-fashioned appearance as a gentleman and remind us that he himself coined his nickname Filth. Filth stands for "Failed in London Try Hong Kong" - "Failed in London, try Hong Kong". In fact, it is the Far East where Feathers established his lawyer reputation and grew rich. He marries Betty, the Beijing-born Scot who, like him, is one of the Raj orphans. He and her returned to England shortly before Hong Kong was returned to China. There they live in comfortable affluence, looked after by a housekeeper and gardener. When Betty collapses dead while planting tulips, Feathers begins to grapple with his past.

“When Betty died so suddenly while planting tulips, the day after the drive to London, where they were about to sign their wills, Filth's astonishment lifted his soul out of his body, and he looked not only down at Betty's slumped corpse, but also at himself himself as he stood there and was deprived of all meaning of life. "

This argument is also accelerated by two letters of condolence, which remind Feathers that Betty once had an affair with his professional rival Terry Veneering, and the surprising twist that this man of all people is moving into his immediate neighborhood.

Feathers was born in Malaysia in the 1920s to British parents; his mother died shortly after he was born. His World War I trauma father, who serves as District Officer for the Kotakinakulu Province of the British Empire, is unable to develop an emotional bond with his son. Cared for by his wet nurse's daughter, Edward Feathers grows up between Malay children, only his skin and hair color distinguish him from them. Finally, a missionary intervenes and brings the four-year-old back to Great Britain. The shock of this sudden change makes the child stutter. In the UK he has aunts who largely ignore his existence. Together with his two distant cousins ​​Babs and Claire and one other boy, he grew up with a foster family in Wales. This foster family was not carefully selected. Her low long-term care allowance was the deciding factor that led her to be chosen. What the children experience there and what binds them together throughout their lives is only revealed towards the end of the novel.

Finally, when she was eight years old, life with this foster family ended. He goes to a private school and through one of his schoolmates, Pat Ingoldby, he experiences a normal family life for the first time during his vacation. But the contact with this family, who receive money from his father, who still lives in the Far East, to take in young Feathers, ends as abruptly as his childhood in Malaysia. The Second World War breaks out; his schoolmate's brother falls and a little later his friend falls too. Feathers also wants to become a soldier, but he is not yet 18 years old and his father orders his son to Singapore to prevent his participation in the war. Feathers still manages to get his license to Oxford before setting off on a freighter for Singapore. The freighter is approaching Singapore at the time the Japanese Army is capturing Singapore. The father, whom Feathers had last seen when he was eight, never met again. The father dies in Japanese captivity.

The freighter, which takes in numerous refugees from Singapore, is returning to Great Britain. Feathers is seriously ill by the time the freighter enters an English port. He contracted a serious infectious disease in the tropics and for a long time it looks like he will not survive it. World War II is already nearing its end when it is made ready to join his father's former regiment. To his disappointment, however, he is posted to guard the queen widow Queen Mary . George VI. had insisted that his mother be evacuated from London. Reluctantly, she complied and moved in with her niece Mary, Duchess of Beaufort, the daughter of her brother Adolphus. Queen Mary takes her young guardian to the heart - he stutters as her son stutters. She is also the driving force behind Feathers' first visit to London. He uses this chance to visit Isobel Ingoldby, the cousin of his school friend. A passionate relationship develops between the two of them before their two paths separate again. Feathers eventually begins his law degree at Oxford.

Post-war England seems to offer Feathers few opportunities for advancement. However, a chance encounter brings him back together with a young man with whom he once traveled to Singapore on the freighter. It is the reason that Feathers also returns to the Far East and makes his fortune there. At the end of his life, Feathers will return there. It is a logical step:

"All his life he had upheld Chinese values: the politeness, the sudden swipes, the absolute hospitality, the joy of money, the propriety, the appreciation of the food, the discretion, the cleverness."

Reviews

An impeccable man was greeted unanimously after its first English-language publication. In his review for the Guardian, Stevie Davis called him a subtle, psychologically delicately drawn masterpiece that moved him more than almost any narrative work in previous years. As an example of Jane Gardam's ability to draw a scene of emotional density in just a few sentences, Davis mentions the moment when Edward Feathers came across her obituary published in a newspaper weeks after the death of his wife Betty. Behind his hands, Feathers, sitting alone in the breakfast room of a hotel, bursts into tears while the hotel staff clears away the breakfast dishes around him. Paul Gray particularly emphasizes the narrative skilful opening scene with which Jane Gardam arouses the reader's curiosity about the person of Edward Feathers, and compares this approach with the beginning of F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby . What he finds less successful, however, are the repeated references to the terrible events that occurred during Feather's childhood with his foster family. Gray is reminded of Stella Gibbons ' classic literary burlesque Cold Comfort Farm , in which an aunt kept talking about the ugly incident in the woodshed.

The reviews in the German-language media were also consistently positive after the novel was translated and published. In his review in Die Welt, Rainer Moritz calls it a phenomenon that the writer Jane Gardam has been so unknown to German readers so far and Franziska Augstein also expresses her amazement in her review for the Süddeutsche Zeitung that the great narrator Jane Gardam is only now about German publishers will really be discovered. After years of writing career, Jane Gardam has achieved a literary skill that not only enables her to easily switch time levels, but also entices the reader with this narrative style. In her review for the Frankfurter Rundschau, Cornelia Geissler goes so far as to compare the structure and dramatic potential of the novel with Ian McEwan's novel Atonement , an undisputed masterpiece of 21st century literature.

Also Felicitas von Lovenberg marvels in her review for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , first, that Jane Gardam will only now really presented to German readers. She highlights how much Jane Gardam owes to the memories of Rudyard Kipling . Kipling himself was one of those Raj orphans who grew up far from their families in Great Britain. How traumatic such a childhood can be, Kipling described in the autobiographical short story Baa Baa, Black Sheep and Lovenberg states that Gardam found this story so depressing that she once remarked that she could not stand it, even in the same room to be like this tale. Lovenberg also records the numerous terrific, ironically broken episodes with which Gardam shows how overwhelmed Feathers is when his past falls on him at the end of his life. She is particularly impressed by Isabel Bogdan's translation. It is a really good translation, possibly supported by the fact that Bogdan, as an English and Japanese scholar, is used to switching between cultural worlds.

In her review of Die Zeit, Susanne Mayer is no less impressed with the novel. She describes Jane Gardam, who celebrates her 88th birthday in 2016, as the new "It-Girl" in English literature. She also highlights Isabel Bogdan's translation. It is the counter-evidence to the often tried thesis that one cannot be as easy and funny as the English in the clumsy German.

expenditure

  • Old Filth. 2004.
    • An impeccable man. Translation: Isabel Bogdan. Hanser, Munich 2015.

Web links

Reviews in German-language media

International reviews

Single receipts

  1. ↑ a b c Franziska Augstein: The secret of the tulips , Süddeutsche Zeitung, December 27, 2015 , accessed on February 6, 2016
  2. ↑ a b c d Felicitas von Lovenberg: If you fail in London, try your luck in Hong Kong. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , August 27, 2015, accessed on February 6, 2016.
  3. ↑ The best British novel of all times - have international critics found it? The Guardian , accessed February 6, 2016
  4. ↑ Jane Gardam: Old Filth. P. 107, German translation by Isabel Bogdan. The original quote is: When Betty died suddenly, planting the tulips the day after their day in London attempting to sign their Wills, Filths's astonishment lifted his soul outside his body and he stood looking down not only at the slumped body but at his own , gazing and emptied of all its meaning now.
  5. ↑ Jane Gardam: Old Filth. P. 6, German translation by Isabel Bogdan. The original quote is: All his life he kept a regard for Chinese values: the courtesy, the sudden thrust, the holiness of hospitality, the pleasure in money, the decorum, the importance of food, the discretion, the cleverness.
  6. ^ Stevie Davis: Pearls beyond price . The Guardian, November 20, 2004 , accessed February 7, 2016
  7. ^ Paul Gray: Orphan of the Empire. , The New York Times , July 23, 2006, accessed February 7, 2016.
  8. ↑ Rainer Moritz: Where has the British Empire gone? Die Welt, October 17, 2015, accessed on February 6, 2015
  9. ↑ BBC report from January 15, 2015, accessed on February 6, 2016
  10. ↑ Cornelia Geissler: Old snob on new roads . Frankfurter Rundschau , December 6, 2015, accessed on February 6, 2016
  11. ↑ a b Susanne Mayer: Tttttttttoll. Zeit, February 4, 2016, accessed February 6, 2016