I'll be here in the sunshine and in the shade
I'll be here in the sunshine and in the shade is Christian Kracht's third novel, published in September 2008 . It was preprinted in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung .
content
The novel belongs to the genre of alternative world stories . It tells of a "Swiss Soviet Republic (SSR)" which, among other things, finds itself in constant war with a large part of the rest of Europe. It is a dystopia , a story of the end times of all civilization.
In this alternative story, Lenin remains in exile in Switzerland as Russia fell victim to a continental explosion. Reference is made here to the Tunguska event , which caused far greater destruction in the alternative world. From now on Switzerland finds itself in a decades-long war with the fascist countries Germany and England. Switzerland has set up extensive colonies in East Africa to attract young people .
The narrator comes from one of these colonies. As Political Commissioner , he is assigned to track down and arrest the suspicious Jewish Colonel Brazhinsky. He owned a shop in Neu-Bern that was smeared with anti-Semitic slogans. From the local divisional officer Favre, the narrator learns about a new form of communication, the so-called smoking language , which Brazhinsky mastered and then went into the reduit . Favre and the narrator get closer and have sexual intercourse, but shortly afterwards she is killed by a German artillery shell.
The narrator then sets off in the direction of the Reduit. He soon finds two Appenzell soldiers sent by him as a advance party dead in a wood. When he meets the dwarf Uriel there, he loses consciousness. Although he doesn't want him harm, Uriel captivates the narrator and denies being the Appenzeller's murderer; instead, he suggests that Brazhinsky killed the men with his smoking language. Uriel lives as a hermit and has one of the last remaining Bibles. The narrator manages to break loose, knock Uriel down and escape.
In an abandoned village, the narrator gets lost in a minefield hidden under the snow. Two German partisans who joined them, who had raped a girl shortly before and then killed, negligently refrained from shooting the narrator in view of his apparently certain death in the minefield and were shot by him. Ultimately, the narrator is saved by Uriel, who followed him, by taking his position in the minefield for him and thus saving his life out of Christian motivation while he sacrifices his own.
When he finally arrives at the Reduit, the narrator wants to arrest Brazhinsky for good. This is the first time that he is demonstrating smoking language, a mixture of telepathy and telekinesis , and does not go into the arrest. Instead he wants to teach the narrator how to smoke too. He later reveals himself to be Favre's husband and explains that he put the anti-Semitic graffiti on his business himself. The narrator is initially drawn under the spell of Brazhinsky's charisma , but gradually he recognizes the decadence and decay that prevail in the externally strong reduit. The Reduit is ailing, and much of what the narrator has been taught gradually turns out to be propaganda lies. When he realizes that the colonel is insane, he decides to leave the fortress. Brazhinsky then tries to murder him, fails and stabs his own eyes out. During the final attack by German airships on the Reduit, the narrator leaves the place and returns to Africa, where, with the fall of the SSR, the order there dissolves and the locals from the cities built for them return to the villages, savannas and plains. The last chapter of the book shows the architect of these cities, Jeanneret (it is probably Le Corbusier ), who wanders desperately through the deserted streets and ultimately hangs himself on a lamppost.
Translations
The novel has been translated into Russian, Bulgarian, Dutch, Swedish, Polish, French, Korean, Norwegian and Croatian.
reception
Kracht's third novel received mostly critical acclaim. Elmar Krekeler wrote in his review in the world : “Kracht menetekelt a story that follows a nightmare logic, in which everything is possible and everything is strangely plausible, as crazy as it seems. A dream story, under which sub-dreams open up again and again, as in a box dream. A black romantic story of the end of all morality, of all society. And you indulge in this nightmare. There is no other way. With angular, cold sentences, Kracht punches one of those books into the literary landscape that is needed to clear your head. ” Krekeler no longer recognizes any traces of pop literature ; instead references to: “ Friedrich Glauser and Joseph Conrad and Ludwig Wittgenstein and Ernst Jünger , a few comic books , Gothic novels , three volumes of language theory , African myths, a bit of steampunk and mountain literature, kitsch , a few drugs, hidden jokes, the African ones Kracht's diaries, among other things, from the ascent to Mount Kilimanjaro and tons of literary ice cubes ”.
Gustav Seibt praised the book in the Süddeutsche Zeitung as follows: “If there is anyone else who reads literature for the sake of style and not for information, out of sheer joy in the effect of sentences, rhythms and adjectives, this is where he will find his text . In comparison, the majority of Kracht's generation comrades appear plump and zolaising, overly elaborate, overly clear or, often even more agonizing, polished like a literary institution. I will be here in the sunshine and in the shade is not a contemporary German novel. "
Others
The title of the novel translates a line from the Irish folk song Danny Boy .
Adaptation
Kracht's novel was first adapted as a theater play in Germany by director Armin Petras . The production was premiered in July 2010 in the Stuttgart State Theater. A month earlier, a theatrical version of Corinna von Rad was staged at the Basel Theater.
literature
- Johannes Birgfeld, Claude D. Conter (Eds.): Christian Kracht. To life and work . 2009, Verlag Kiepenheuer and Witsch, ISBN 346204138X
- Stefan Bronner: The open book - On the relationship between language and reality in Christian Kracht's novel I'll be here in the sunshine and in the shade . 2009 / Issue 2: German Books - Forum for Literature, Weidler-Buchverlag
Awards
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/682148217
- ↑ http://moonji.com/auth/6748/
- ↑ http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/975612449
- ↑ Elmar Krekeler, “Swiss Imperialism; Christian Kracht is serious. "I'll be here in the sunshine and in the shade" is a terrific horror novel of dark size ”. Die Welt , September 20, 2008, “Literary World”, p. 3.
- ↑ Gustav Seibt, "It smelled of human tallow" ( Memento from September 24, 2008 in the Internet Archive ), Süddeutsche Zeitung from 20./21. September 2008.
- ↑ Anke Dürr: Endzeit-Theater: Yoda in the Alps. In: Spiegel Online . June 26, 2010, accessed June 9, 2018 .
