Canada (novel)

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Canada (Original title: Canada ) is a novel by the US author and Pulitzer Prize winner Richard Ford from 2012. Frank Heibert translated the American original edition into German.

content

In the first part of the novel, which is set in Great Falls , Montana in the early 1960s, fifteen-year-old Dell Parsons experiences how his middle-class parents become bank robbers. After his parents were arrested, he and his twin sister Berner stood alone overnight. The family has been destroyed, the youth of the siblings ruined. While Berner simply runs away, Dell finds refuge on the Canadian prairies with the help of Mildred Remlinger, a friend of his mother's.

In the second part of the novel, Dell is torn from his childhood and youth and confronted with growing up. Mildred takes him out of the country, to the Canadian province of Saskatchewan . She leaves him there in the care of her brother Arthur Remlinger, a man of good manners but a criminal past. From then on, the protagonist's growth is marked by sadness, disillusionment, powerlessness and the whims of fate. An atmosphere of threat and fear characterizes Dell's existence. He witnesses a series of murders, escapes the desolation of the Canadian province and takes a long-distance bus to Winnipeg .

In the short final part, Dell looks back on these years as a husband and retired literature teacher. He meets his twin sister again, who, unlike himself, did not manage to escape her fate as an outsider.

History of origin

As early as 1989 Richard Ford made notes on this story, which he kept in the freezer compartment of his refrigerator in his wooden house for fear of fire. He regularly expanded his records when he was in Montana or Saskatchewan, Canada. Two years of preparation and two more years of writing followed by a year of proofreading preceded the publication.

style

The first-person narrator , who has now put his life in order, looks back fifty years later on the fateful period of his adolescence . Ford's writing style is characterized by expressive language images and precise, almost naturalistic descriptions of the characters, landscapes and animals.

reception

Although the novel has the traits of a detective novel , it is classified as a development novel in the reception . The author is more interested in the consequences than the events themselves: How does the protagonist deal with injuries, how does he look for his life and survival? The author gives the answer in the final sentences of his novel: “I only know that you have better chances in your life - better chances of survival - if you can handle losses well; if you manage not to become a cynic about it. "

The widely acclaimed work of Richard Ford received positive reviews almost without exception in the reception of German literary criticism. Verena Auffermann writes in the Cicero that the work belongs in the repertoire of great American legends, and Christian Buß writes in his review of the novel on Spiegel Online that "alongside Don DeLillo and Philip Roth", "Richard Ford is one of the last great living American storytellers."

Wolfgang Schneider praises the over-precise representation of people in dRadio Kultur . The people are so vividly placed on the narrative stage that it is a pleasure to read. Wolfgang Schneider criticizes the sometimes clichéd evocations of fate in which Ford engages.

The German translation gave rise to controversy in the Swiss television program Literaturclub : Stefan Zweifel discovered a sloppy German adaptation and appealed to the editors of the major publishers: Give the translators time! Elke Heidenreich, on the other hand, showed absolutely no sympathy for the criticism of the De Sade translator, and said to him: Oh, you doubters, you!

The novel was awarded the Prix ​​Femina Étranger in 2013 .

expenditure

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hannes Stein: I'm only angry because I know evil . Interview with Richard Ford. In: Welt Online from August 28, 2012; Retrieved August 28, 2013
  2. ^ Richard Ford: Canada . Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-446-24026-1 , p. 462.
  3. ↑ Verena Auffermann : Myths from God's own Country . In: Cicero Online of December 7, 2012; Retrieved August 28, 2013
  4. ↑ Christian Buß : Richard Ford's novel "Canada": Mama and Papa, the bank robbers , Spiegel Online from August 27, 2012; Retrieved June 5, 2016
  5. ^ Wolfgang Schneider: A destroyed youth . In: Deutschlandradio Kultur , September 3, 2012; Retrieved August 28, 2013
  6. ↑ Link to the excerpt (there from 18:31) of the broadcast of September 18, 2012; accessed on July 14, 2019