Salt for the sea
Salt for the Sea (original title: Salt to the Sea ) is a historical novel by the American writer Ruta Sepetys and tells of the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff during the Second World War .
Salt for the Sea is Sepetys' third novel, published in 2016 in the USA by Philomel and also in 2016 in Germany in a translation by Henning Ahrens by Königskinder . Salt for the sea has been published in 16 countries and won the 2017 Carnegie Medal , was developed by Publishers Weekly as one of the Best Books in 2016 , by the New York Times as one of the Notable Children's Books of 2016 , the School Library Journal as one of the Best of 2016 books and named one of the Best Children's Books of 2016 by the Wall Street Journal . The international press described the novel as "gripping" ( Neue Zürcher Zeitung ), "crushing literary thriller" and "captivating for both adults and young people" ( New York Times ), "outstanding novel" and "masterfully written" (Wall Street Journal) and "haunting reminder of almost forgotten catastrophes and the resilience of the human mind" ( The Washington Post ).
content
East Prussia 1945, a group of refugees from different origins, more or less voluntarily united by fate, strikes through the wintry, war-torn landscape in the direction of Gotenhafen . There, as part of the Hannibal company , they should be able to escape by ship to the German mainland. To get there, however, it is an arduous and life-threatening journey, on which the refugees are not only plagued by cold, hunger and hostile attacks. Joana, Florian and Emilia, who have joined the escaping group, hide secrets that are only slowly revealed. The crowd finally reaches the port and rescue seems to be within reach. But while the protagonists of the novel can get a seat on the Wilhelm Gustloff , many others stay behind on the bank. When Joana, Florian and Emilia slowly begin to believe that their escape will end well, the unbelievable happens: Three Soviet torpedoes sink the overcrowded ship, which almost exclusively transports civilians. 9,000 people die, including 5,000 children. Few can save themselves.
Literary genre and style
Salt for the Sea is a book for young people , but also a historical novel . Sepetys describes the factual act from the perspective of four teenagers. The short narrative episodes of the protagonists Joana, Florian, Emilia and Alfred quickly change narrators and often end with cliff hangers. Sepetys takes into account the different places of origin and linguistic characteristics of the characters. With the realistic representation of the individual fates and flight circumstances, she can paint an authentic picture of the flight through East Prussia.
characters
main characters
Joana
Joana, is a nurse, has brown curly hair and comes from a good family. As a Lithuanian from Biržai , she meets the Nazis' ethnic standards and therefore fled to Germany. In order to escape the danger posed by the Soviets in her hometown, her mother first sent her to Insterburg . There she works as a nurse and her ambition is paying off. She neglected family and friends for her studies. Now she misses her mother, whom she hopes to find in a refugee camp in Germany. She knows nothing about the fate of her father and brother. Joana devotedly takes care of all the injured she meets on the run and ensures the cohesion of the group. Her selflessness stems, among other things, from the feelings of guilt that she carries within herself because she is responsible for the deportation of her cousin and their parents. A letter to Lina in which Joana says goodbye before fleeing the Soviets puts Lina and her family in the crosshairs of the occupiers. This explains Joana's anger at Florian, who saves her life when she tries to pull Ingrid out of the frozen lake. Ingrid dies and Joana is again the one who survived. Even with the help that she gives to all the other refugees, she cannot suppress the memory of her guilt and the torments of conscience associated with it.
Florian
Florian comes from Tilsit in East Prussia. He's tall, strong, and handsome. Due to his artistic talent he found a job with the art restorer Dr. Long in Koenigsberg . He is particularly interested in copying and enables him to forge documents or signatures. In Dr. Lange, who leads him to believe that he is spiritually connected, he sees a foster father. But when Florian finds the unopened letters that he sent him in the restaurateur's desk drawer, he realizes that he has only been taken advantage of. When his real father is finally executed as a traitor because he drew maps for the assassins who tried to shoot Hitler and Florian is supposed to bear the costs of his execution, he seeks revenge and turns against the Nazi regime. Dr. For a long time, Gauleiter Erich Koch came into possession of the Amber Room . In order to retaliate against the man who betrayed him, Florian not only steals the map and the key to the hiding place of the art treasure and hides them in the sole of his shoe, but also takes the most beautiful piece - a swan made of amber. Worried that the robbery will soon be discovered, Florian fears persecutors and tries to hide his secret from everyone. That's why he doesn't like it at all when Emilia tries to follow him after he has saved her from a Russian soldier, but she reminds him of his little sister Anni and Florian feels sorry for the girl. When she collapses in the snow, he brings her back to the refugee group that she had recently left and he realizes that it may be easier to be with others because he benefits from the community. Joana can treat Florian's inflamed wound from shrapnel and his fever drops. But the explosion left him deaf in his left ear. Although Florian is initially a lone fighter, the members of the group are close to his heart and he likes Joana more and more, so that he can soon trust her. Arrived in Gotenhafen , Florian cleverly uses his wound and his talent for drawing to get a place on the Wilhelm Gustloff and, thanks to his knowledge of human nature, dupes Alfred, a German sailor. Hoping to find his sister Anni again in Denmark, he set sail.
Emilia
15-year-old Emilia is the daughter of a mathematics professor from Lwów in Poland. She has a close relationship with her parents. Especially to her mother, who dies while giving birth to her second child. Emilia's father is inconsolable when he has to send her to the farm of a family friend near Nemmersdorf , because he hopes that she will be safe there from the war. He stays behind and it can be assumed that it was murdered by the Nazis as a Polish intellectual. But at the Kleist farm, the effects of the war overtake Emilia. When Russian soldiers want to rape Else, the family's daughter, Mrs. Kleist sacrifices the Polish girl, who is more of a burden to her. Emilia is dragged into a cellar by the men and abused there. Ashamed by the incident, she tries to hide her pregnancy. In order to cope with the trauma of this event, she invents a story to tell the others when her pregnancy is discovered. August, the son of the Kleists, is said to be the father of their unborn child. Sometimes she even believes in it herself and dreams of using him to mount cartwheels on the fireplace so that the storks could build a nest. She loves the birds, because they remind Emilia of her home country and the happy days she spent there with her Jewish friends Helena and Rachel. Both were deported. Emilia initially struggles through the winter landscape of East Prussia, until Florian rescues her from a Russian soldier who wants to assault her. Her protector reminds her of the figure of a knight in Polish history. In order to return the favor for her rescue and to finally not be alone anymore, Emilia follows him and shoots a soldier who jumps out of a bush behind Florian with his gun drawn. With the help of the refugee group, Emilia is able to reach the port while sitting on a cart, because she can hardly walk because of her pregnancy. In order to get a place on board the ship despite her Polish origins, she uses the ID of a Latvian who has died, with whom she at least shares her blonde hair and can explain her broken German. The pink cap, which she never takes off, pulled low over her face, she passes the control. On board the ship, Emilia gives birth with Joana's help. At first she cannot establish a connection with the unwanted child, but Florian shows Emilia how much of her there is in her daughter. Emilia then decides to name her newborn baby Halinka, after her mother's nickname. When the Wilhelm Gustloff sinks, Emilia sacrifices herself for the little boy who accompanied the group by giving him the last seat in the lifeboat. All she has left is a raft to float on the sea.
Alfred
The 17-year-old Alfred from Heidelberg is stationed in Gotenhafen . In his mind he formulates letters to his childhood sweetheart Hannelore, in which he portrays himself as a successful heroic soldier and imagines how she expects his return. Alfred imagines himself in a dream world with which he compensates for his feelings of inferiority and suppresses Hannelore's actual fate, because she was arrested and deported as a Jew by German soldiers before his eyes. Contrary to his self-image - Alfred considers himself a philosopher - he is not recognized by others. He was bullied a lot as a child and is now harassed by other soldiers and superiors. Alfred was too weak to become part of the Hitler Youth and his nervous disposition gives him an itchy rash in the chaos of the war. In the hope of being able to prove it to everyone at some point, he blindly follows the National Socialist system and is duped by Florian who promises him a medal if Alfred keeps his secret and brings him on board the ship. He admits to Florian that he sometimes feels sorry for the “inferior” and that he feels guilty for it. Alfred has a soft spot for butterflies, some of which he pinned to the wall behind his closet in his teenage room. When his mother, who worries about him, expresses her amazement at the finding of the butterflies, he answers harshly that she shouldn't go into his room again. In search of female affection, he would like to give Joana a crystal butterfly and strings the auxiliary sisters housed in the lower part of the ship, but is not taken seriously by any of the women. Alfred is a sociopathic loner who, through his dreams, is no longer able to correctly assess his environment.
Minor characters
Heinz
Heinz is a shoemaker and because he talks a lot and enthusiastically about shoes, others only call him the “shoe poet”. Using the shoes that a person wears, he can draw many conclusions and guess the secrets of his companions. He lost his wife, with whom he was married for 45 years. But he finds a new family in the little boy who accompanies the refugees and quickly feels responsible for the child.
Klaus
The six-year-old Klaus is described by everyone as a little stray, because he comes across the group of fleeing people, his name and an address in Berlin pinned to his jacket. He was out with his grandma, but she froze to death in the cold. He tells Jonah that she has not woken up again. He finds consolation in the shoe poet and in a one-eared plush bunny, which he finds on the way and always carries around with him from then on.
Eve
Eva is a huge woman who looks like a Viking. She tries to defuse her direct manner by always apologizing before she says anything. Nevertheless, she is not very understanding or empathetic. Since she is concerned above all with her own well-being, she is annoyed about the arrival of Emilia and Florian. Because anyone caught in the company of enemies or deserters runs the risk of being shot as well. Eva is traveling alone because her husband, who was actually too old to be recruited, was drafted into the Volkssturm. She has a cart with her belongings for which she risks her ticket for the ship. Perhaps this was Eva's salvation, because it will give her a place on the Hansa.
Ingrid
Ingrid, the blind girl, was out with her aunt, but lost her in the turmoil at a train station and has been on her own ever since. She worries that she will be classified as inferior at the checkpoint because of her blindness and interned. But she uses a trick to tell the soldier that she was wounded in the eyes by a bomb, but that her eyesight is slowly recovering. Although Ingrid cannot see anything, she can draw conclusions about a person's appearance from the tone of voice, smell or movements. With her keen sense of hearing and smell, she is always the first to hear approaching fliers. When she tries to use her skills for the group to test the stability of the ice field, she drowns because Russian planes bomb the frozen lake and she breaks through the ice.
Literary criticism
- "Heartbreaking, historical, and a little bit hopeful." - The Kirkus Review, Nov. 3, 2015 (Heartbreaking, historical, and with a little hope)
- “Artfully told and sensitively crafted, Sepetys's exploration of this little-known piece of history will leave readers weeping.” - School Library Journal , Kiera Parrott, December 29, 2015 . (Artfully told and soulfully designed so that Sepetys' exploration of this little-known historical detail will leave readers weeping.)
- “Superlatives… masterfully crafted… [a] powerful work of historical fiction.” - The Wall Street Journal , Meghan Cox Gurdon, January 29, 2016 (best performance ... Masterfully designed... A masterpiece of historical prose)
- “[Sepetys is] a master of YA fiction… Even though […] she leans too heavily on the clipped, overheated narrative voice that's de rigueur in contemporary YA — she once again anchors a panoramic view of epic tragedy in perspectives that feel deeply textured and immediate. ”- Entertainment Weekly , Stephan Lee, February 8, 2016 (Sepetys is a master of literature for young adults ... even if it uses too much of a fragmented, over-dramatic narrative style that is now compulsory for young adult literature seems - she succeeds again in translating an all-round painting of epic tragedy into perspectives that feel direct and deeply structured.)
- “And once again, Ruta Sepetys acts as champion of the interstitial people so often ignored - whole populations lost in the cracks of history.” - New York Times Book Review, MT Anderson, February 12, 2016 (And again Ruta Sepetys acts as a master of the people in the grinder of history who are so often ignored - entire populations that disappear into the grids of history.)
- "Sepetys excels in shining light on lost chapters of history, and this visceral novel proves a memorable testament to strength and resilience in the face of war and cruelty." - Publishers Weekly , Steven Malk, February 2016 (Sepetys excels at shedding light on lost chapters of history, and this deeply core novel proves to be an enduring legacy of strength and resilience in the face of war and cruelty.)
- "Ruta Sepetys's riveting novel Salt to the Sea is a haunting reminder of an almost-forgotten disaster and the resilience of the human spirit." - The Washington Post , Mary Quattlebaum, March 7, 2016 . (Ruta Sepetys' gripping novel Salt for the Sea is a haunted reminder of an almost forgotten catastrophe and the resilience of the human spirit.)
- "This haunting gem of a novel begs to be remembered." - Booklist, Maggie Reagan (Don't forget this ghostly gem of a novel.)
Audio book
At the same time as the book was published, an audio book version was published by the American Listening Library in 2016, an audio book version of the book that was read by Jorjeana Marie, Will Damron, Cassandra Morris and Michael Crouch.
Public book presentations
The book was presented as a German premiere in the presence of the author at the children's and youth program at the 16th Berlin International Literature Festival in September 2016.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Ruta Sepetys International ( Memento of the original from March 26, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Archive
- ↑ http://best-books.publishersweekly.com/pw/best-books/2016
- ↑ http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/23/books/review/notable-childrens-books-of-2016.html
- ↑ http://www.slj.com/bestof2016/
- ↑ Andrea Lüthi: Laconically told horror. In: nzz.ch. November 2, 2016, accessed October 14, 2018 .
- ↑ http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/23/books/review/notable-childrens-books-of-2016.html
- ↑ http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/14/books/review/salt-to-the-sea-by-ruta-sepetys.html
- ↑ http://www.wsj.com/articles/in-peril-on-the-sea-1454100696
- ↑ https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/salt-to-the-sea-a-war-story-of-survival-and-fates-entwined/2016/03/07/1506443c-e49d-11e5 -a6f3-21ccdbc5f74e_story.html
- ↑ https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/ruta-sepetys/salt-to-the-sea/
- ↑ http://www.slj.com/2015/12/reviews/books/salt-to-the-sea-by-ruta-sepetys-slj-review/
- ↑ http://www.wsj.com/articles/in-peril-on-the-sea-1454100696
- ↑ http://www.ew.com/article/2016/02/08/salt-to-the-sea-ruta-sepetys-ew-review
- ↑ http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/14/books/review/salt-to-the-sea-by-ruta-sepetys.html?_r=0
- ↑ http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-399-16030-1
- ↑ https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/salt-to-the-sea-a-war-story-of-survival-and-fates-entwined/2016/03/07/1506443c-e49d-11e5 -a6f3-21ccdbc5f74e_story.html
- ↑ http://www.booklistonline.com/ProductInfo.aspx?pid=7769187&AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1
- ↑ http://www.literaturfestival.com/kjl
