Runa (novel)

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Runa is the 2015 debut novel by the German writer Vera Buck . It tells the story of a student at the Paris Hôpital de la Salpêtrière and his patient Runa at the end of the 19th century.

construction

The book is divided into six parts plus a prologue and an epilogue . In the prologue and epilogue, the fictional first-person narrator and Maxime Chevrier, who appears only as a minor character, remembers the events at the hospital around 15 years ago.

The individual parts of the novel are preceded by quotations from contemporary doctors, including those of the Swedish physician Carl Janson , the Swiss psychiatrist and inventor of psychosurgery Gottlieb Burckhardt , Manfred Bleuler , also from Switzerland , psychiatrist and son of Paul Eugen Bleuler , and the French pathologist and neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot , who plays an important role in the novel.

The setting is Paris in 1884. There are also reviews of the time of the protagonist Johann Richard Hell in his native Switzerland.

The book closes with comments by the author, including an extensive bibliography on the subject of the book and a reference to the citation.

Blurb

"You didn't come here to recover, but to die."

Paris, 1884. A little girl is admitted to the neurological department of the Salpêtrière Clinic: Runa, who defies all the tried and tested treatment methods and the famous doctor and hysteria researcher Dr. Charcot embarrassed in front of the assembled expert audience. Jori Hell, a Swiss medical student, senses his chance to get the longed-for doctorate and suggests the previously unthinkable. He is the first doctor to want to cure a patient by performing an operation on her brain. What he doesn't suspect: Runa has left mysterious messages all over the city that others have long since noticed. And she knows Jori's darkest secret ...

content

The historical novel tells the story of the Swiss medical student Johann Richard "Jori" Hell, who was preparing for his doctoral thesis at the Hôpital de la Salpêtrière, the most famous mental hospital in Europe at the time. The sensitive Jori experiences the grotesque world of the gigantic infirmary and the fierce competition among doctors to be the first to apply new diagnoses and therapies. He got to know the patients in his department who - often tied up - were put on public display in the legendary lectures by Jean-Martin Charcot and tortured with cruel experiments - women from the slums of Paris who were diagnosed with the popular diagnosis of “hysteria " is provided.

One of the patients is 9-year-old Runa, on whom he would like to carry out the first psychosurgical operation on the brain of a living person in order to later be able to heal his beloved Pauline Bleuler, who is suffering in psychiatry . Runa, however, resists all therapies and refuses any form of communication.

At the same time, the former police inspector Lecoq was investigating several unexplained deaths, in connection with which he came across puzzling scraps, the deciphering of which led him and Jori to the catacombs under Paris , where the two hideous experiments carried out on children by doctors from the Salpêtrière to get on the track.

reception

Vera Buck's debut was well received. The pictorial language as well as the sober but relentless description of the horror of history were praised. But also the tension that results from the constellations of the characters on the one hand and the interpersonal misunderstandings and problems on the other hand was emphasized. The novel seems credible with its comprehensible plot.

"The language, on the other hand, is largely sovereign and the images are strong."

- Thomas Widmer : Züricher Tagesanzeiger

Vera Buck tells the plot from different perspectives and at the latest when new people with new insider knowledge and new subjective perspectives are introduced in the last third of the book, you get the feeling that a little less in scope and crime ambition would have been more, especially since the text is linguistically in parts a bit plain. That doesn't detract from the great plus point of the novel: the precise insight into the early days of neurosurgery that the author grants. The offshoots of the brutalities that Vera Buck so relentlessly described reached after their terrible climax under the Nazi rule well into the 1970s, when psychiatry finally had to face a basic civil law discussion that continues to this day. Vera Buck describes the beginnings of this horror in great detail and without exaggeration - that is what makes her book so gripping despite its shortcomings. "

- Susanne Billig : Deutschlandfunk Kultur

“There are also a large number of other figures, almost all of which are carefully and carefully worked out. It is evident that the author has tried not to incorporate characters that could fit into a black and white scheme. This effort is paying off. [...] Vera Buck has made a great debut that illuminates a chapter in human history that has little to do with humanity. She doesn’t mince her words and confronts readers with a nameless horror. She tells a story that is coherent and testifies to the author's convincing narrative power. "

- Rita Dell'Agnese : histo-couch.de

“" Runa "is a book that, like Doctor Charcot's vaudeville practice, is both fascinating and repulsive - especially women who will inevitably think their way into the victims of the neurologists. But the story is carefully researched, well told and, even with 600 pages, has no essential length. A remarkable debut. "

- Christiane Irrgang : NDR culture

Awards

expenditure

See also

Web links

References

  1. ↑ https://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/zuerich/bellevue/das-zeitalter-der-eierstockpresse/story/25131564
  2. ↑ https://www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de/vera-buck-runa-dunkles-geheimnis-im-kopf.950.de.html?dram:article_id=329539
  3. ↑ https://www.histo-couch.de/titel/5134-runa/
  4. ↑ https://www.ndr.de/kultur/buch/tipps/Vera-Buck-Runa,runa102.html
  5. ↑ https://www.lovelybooks.de/leserpreis/2015/historische-romane/#liste