Barbarian Spring
Spring of the Barbarians is the first novella by the German-Swiss writer Jonas Lüscher . The work, published in Munich in 2013, was awarded the Franz Hessel Prize in the same year and the Hans Fallada Prize in 2016.
content
The protagonist of the novella is the Swiss businessman Preising. He has taken over a family business that manufactures switching parts for radio antennas. Not having a great deal of business acumen, he left the administrative position to Prodavonic, a young technician with Bosnian roots. Preising itself only serves the company to embody the image of the family business.
In the novella, Preising tells the story of a business trip to Tunisia while he is taking a walk with the first-person narrator in an asylum . The psychiatry is the setting for the framework plot of the work. The reason for the stay in the institution is described as the "inability to understand us [Preising and the first-person narrator] as actors", which in Preising is stubborn and at the same time naive "prudence", in the first-person narrator Expresses depression.
The trip to Tunisia leads Preising first to Moncef Daghfous, the owner of a factory in which Preising's company produces. During his stay with him, the subject of child labor comes up, which is described as problematic in terms of ethics on the one hand and economic efficiency on the other. The host wants to get Preising to an agreement and even offers him the marriage of one of his daughters. The protagonist wants to refuse, but at this moment Daghfous is called to the fire of one of his phosphate plants. The Tunisian dies in the fire and Preising has to leave the house of the host.
He is picked up by Saida, the daughter of Daghfous's competitor Slim Malouch. After a stay in Tunis, Preising and Saida go to a Slim Malouch holiday resort. On the way there through the desert, the two discover a bus that has run over a dozen camels. The suffering of the animals, the care of the owner and the obscurity of the situation set the reader for the following scenes.
In Thousand and One Night Resort arrived Preising met the other guests for a wedding of two young British arrived. Most of them work on the London Stock Exchange, so their behavior and clothing are accordingly. Preising quickly becomes friends with the groom's mother, Pippa, who, like the Swiss, regards the wedding celebration as decadent.
In the next few days, Preising also becomes friends with Pippa's husband, Sanford, a sociology professor. The two decide to go to old Berber settlements.
The wedding begins. The bride rides a camel to the altar, illustrating the decadence of the celebration. After a boisterous party in the desert resort, the manager Saida found out the next morning that the London Stock Exchange had collapsed overnight and that the guests from England had lost a large part of their fortune and most likely their jobs. In response, she tries to charge guests' credit cards, refuses any service from the hotel staff, and asks them to leave the same day.
When the wedding guests wake up and are confronted with the bad news, despair breaks out. The situation is escalating. After the guests in the hotel no longer receive any food, they absurdly slaughter the camel from the wedding ceremony in order to cook a traditional Tunisian dish, mutton stuffed with goat stuffed with quail, together with a female dog and her puppies, who have just been killed. The situation comes to a head when the fire over which the camel is to be cooked gets out of control and the resort is on fire a little later.
Preising can escape the grotesque situation with a vehicle ordered by Saida. Back in Tunis, he and Saida visit one of the companies in which Preisings produces. The workers there are children, Dinkas who have fled South Sudan and who work in visibly poor conditions. Saida is arrested as the daughter of the factory owner.
criticism
Ijoma Mangold wrote in his review of the novella: “Lüscher is a masterful observer of society. [...] Otherwise, only Martin Mosebach can write such witty and malicious social physiognomies in Germany . For me, Jonas Lüscher is [...] the big discovery this year. The material with which his novella plays is absolutely relevant. "
Individual evidence
- ↑ Jonas Lüscher: Spring of the Barbarians . 2nd Edition. btb, Munich 2015, ISBN 978-3-442-74823-5 .
- ↑ Die Zeit No. 31, July 25, 2013, p. 39.