Nowhere else
Christiane Neudecker's first novel is nowhere else
It was published in 2008 by Luchterhand Literaturverlag , Munich. The action takes place in Myanmar , around 2004, and is told from the perspective of a German backpacker. The main themes are life in a dictatorship and the loss of a sense of reality in an exotic country.
action
The story is told in several parallel narrative strands in the book: The "present" starts from the separation at the bus stop, the first part of the journey and the escape from the GDR are told in flashbacks . The German backpacker, whose name the reader does not know, met the attractive, courageous, but somewhat naive Danish backpacker Sine in Burma when she helped him out of an unpleasant situation. The two travel together, and Sine can also deal with mobbing by soldiers and similar problems in the rest of the world. He tells her in detail about his supposed escape from the GDR many years ago, which impresses her very much. Sine also arranged a discussion on the matter with a member of the banned opposition party NLD. Eventually she and the protagonist become a couple and spend some very relaxing days at a lake. On the onward journey, however, she discovers Cologne's birthplace in his passport and thus notices that his GDR past was a lie.
After he has lost Sine, the protagonist gradually loses reality. His mental instability is exacerbated by a worsening infectious disease with attacks of fever. At first he is afraid of malaria , but is unable to carry out a test and continues to adhere to the hygiene regulations only insufficiently. Instead, he is desperately looking for Sine in all places of interest to tourists. However, the longer this takes, the less likely it will be to meet her. He first meets the unsympathetic, intrusive American Jeff, who offers him drugs and finally breaks up with him in an argument. But then he meets Ute, a friendly and reassuringly sensible woman who is on vacation in Burma to distract herself from her work in a women's refuge in Fürth. She also helps him when his illness gets worse.
The reader now learns the background to the story of the escape and the journey of the protagonist: The protagonist is a theater actor who lived with his director. In reality she experienced the escape from the GDR. From a vacation in Burma, she brought photos of the inhabitants of a mountain village who are unable to take such pictures themselves. After a fire in the shared apartment, she is now in a coma with severe brain damage. The main actor wants to bring the photos to the mountain village in their place. Because his visa would otherwise expire, the backpacker is still pretty sick and makes his way to the village on his own. He reaches Mr. Khin, a mountain guide his girlfriend told him about. A visit to the village itself is not possible due to the bad weather, but Mr. Khin promises to deliver the photos. He nurses the leading actor back to health and gives him the opportunity to support children in a nearby school with a donation and a letter, as the director did before him. When he is waiting at the airport for his return home, the protagonist meets Ute again. In the meantime, she has met Sine and gives him her email address.
style
The book tells the story in short, sometimes almost bullet-point sentences, whereby the restlessness and general mood of the main character is transferred to the way of representation. What is striking is the richness of detail in the description, in which the tourist often gets lost in looking at unusual little things. The present story is written in the present tense, the two flashbacks in the past. The conversations with Sine and Jeff are reproduced in a mixture of German and English.