One hundred days (novel)

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Hundert Tage is a novel by Lukas Bärfuss that was published by Wallstein Verlag in 2008 .

action

The Swiss development worker David Hohl traveled to the capital of Rwanda in 1990 , where he worked in the office on development projects for the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation , thereby supporting a dictatorial regime. At that time, Rwanda was still considered a model country on the African continent. Chaos breaks out in the capital, Kigali , when the Pope gives a speech in the stadium, with Hohl almost crushed by the crowd. In the hospital he meets Agathe again, whom he has already met at Brussels airport . A violent love affair between the two begins. Tutsi rebels invade the city shortly afterwards, and genocide is imminent. When the Hutu mass murders of the Tutsi began in 1994 after the president's plane was shot down , the development workers left the country. Hohl spontaneously decides to stay and hides in his house. His lover Agathe, the daughter of a ministerial official, is still visiting him now. His gardener hoards booty there, but takes care of him until Hohl realizes that he is one of the murderers and drives him away. Hohl died of thirst when Hutu militias settled in his garden and gave him water and food. When the rebels stand in front of Kigali, Hohl flees with the Hutu to the Congo . David is immediately welcomed as a helper in the refugee camp . When he learns that Agathe is in Goma , Hohl earns money through corruption in order to be able to travel to her. Shortly after Hohl arrived in Goma, Agathe died of cholera and he returned to Switzerland.

Characters and relationships

characters
  • David Hohl: Animal lover, development worker, helpful, perfectionist
  • Paul: Deputy Coordinator, Perfectionist
  • Agathe: daughter of a ministerial official
  • Missland: Ex-development worker who stayed in Rwanda and spends his life drinking, smoking and women
  • Marianne: Head of the management, lonely, familyless, strict, correct, bureaucratic
  • Théoneste: gardener in Amsar's house, where David lives, later becomes a murderer
  • Erneste: Housekeeper in the Amsar house where David lives
  • Ines: Paul's wife
Relationships of the characters
  • David to Paul: Paul is his superior. They later realize that they are best friends, but hardly know each other.
  • David to Agathe: He loves her, she keeps him at a distance despite an intimate love affair.
  • David zu Missland: He hates Missland, but also admires her because he is the only one who has settled in the country and spends a lot of time with her.

Formal aspects

Hundred Days is a novel of around 200 pages and without a chapter structure. It is always told from the first-person perspective, mostly from that of David. Background information is always included in the narrative tone.

main emphasis

The central theme in the book is development workers. For the western development aid workers, Rwanda was the ideal country, with a good climate, a functioning state, with disciplined and adaptive residents. So there was a project on every hill. Forest is being reforested where it has already been irretrievably destroyed, a Swiss engineer is killed trying to rescue a tree. In Kigali, development workers and diplomats are playing a scavenger hunt organized by Missland, a failed development worker who is created as a counter-figure to Hohl.

Another central issue is the allegation that the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation in Rwanda served the murder system from the beginning without being aware of it. Development aid is geared towards stability and therefore always benefits those in power. You had no sense of the consequences of what you were doing and you didn't think about who you were using because you saw yourself as apolitical. They helped lay telephone lines through which murder orders were later passed, and they offered excellent training in radio journalism, so that the baiting took place in well-made programs. And a Swiss man, who was directly on the Swiss payroll until 1993, was the dictator's advisor.

interpretation

With the book, Lukas Bärfuss wants to draw attention to the fact that the Swiss recognize themselves in the order and modesty of the Rwandans and do not notice what is brewing. Because it is precisely this order that makes genocide possible. Genocide can only happen in an orderly state in which everyone knows their place. Analysts agree that the Rwandan genocide was a perfectly staged action that required a functioning hierarchy of power, not an outbreak of spontaneous violence.

criticism

Roman Bucheli describes the book in the NZZ as a work that deals with the involvement of people in contradictions. It should not be seen as a plea against development aid, but rather show "how people deal with being able to choose only one of two evils without being able to assess the consequences of their actions."

Tobias Rüther writes in the FAZ that the book “feels like journalism [reads]”, and he appreciates how realistic the book is.

In Verena Auffermann's review published in Die Zeit , it seems that Lukas Bärfuss, like his narrator David Hohl, is thirsting for justice. She admires how skilfully the author has embellished unpleasant messages.

Rolf Bossart's criticism in the Swiss WOZ says little about the content of the novel, rather the author criticizes the partial untruthfulness of the material. The criticism assumes that the book has already been read.

David Signer's review in Weltwoche is well researched, precise and gives the reader a comprehensive overview of the book's content with exciting background information. “'Hundred Days' is committed, critical, political literature in the best sense of the word, without ever becoming a propaganda or a treatise,” the author wrote in his review.

Awards

In 2008 the novel was on the long list of the German Book Prize . In the same year Bärfuss was awarded the Mara Cassens Prize for the novel , and in 2009 the special prize of the Erich Maria Remarque Peace Prize .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ By Roman Bucheli: "Hundred Days" - Lukas Bärfuss' clever and disturbing novel about a life in contradictions: The dilemma of good intentions . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . April 11, 2008, ISSN  0376-6829 ( nzz.ch [accessed January 25, 2017]).
  2. ↑ Tobias Rüther: Lukas Bärfuss: Hundred Days: Make your cross and go to hell . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . April 12, 2008, ISSN  0174-4909 ( faz.net [accessed January 25, 2017]).
  3. ↑ Verena Auffermann: Novel: War and Love in Kigali . In: The time . March 13, 2008, ISSN  0044-2070 ( zeit.de [accessed January 25, 2017]).
  4. ^ "Hundred Days": Against false shame . February 7, 2012 ( woz.ch [accessed January 25, 2017]).
  5. ↑ The World Week | Weltwoche Online - www.weltwoche.ch: Literature: When the Swiss want to save Africa | Die Weltwoche, edition 13/2008. Retrieved January 25, 2017 .