Vango

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Vango is a two-part youth novel by the French author Timothée de Fombelle . The first volume was published by Gallimard Jeunesse in 2010 as Vango. Entre ciel et terre and 2011 in the German translation by Tobias Scheffel and Sabine Grebing as Vango. Between heaven and earth near Gerstenberg . In 2011 the second volume Vango followed. Un prince sans royaume , 2012 the German translation Vango. Prince without a kingdom . The story of Vango, who is haunted by powerful opponents in search of his past, takes place in the first half of the 20th century.

content

The plot of the two volumes is not told chronologically, especially in the first volume there are time jumps. The following table of contents therefore does not reproduce some passages in the order they are told. The plot is fictional, but the locations, some events and individuals are taken from reality.

Between heaven and earth

Vango came to the Aeolian island of Salina in 1918 at the age of three with his wet nurse, known as Mademoiselle . He neither knows his origins nor his parents. Vango grows up in great freedom, he undertakes daring climbing tours across the island. At the age of 10 he discovered the “invisible monastery” on the neighboring island of Alicudi , a religious community under the direction of Father Zefiro, which offers a safe home above all to the politically persecuted. In the following years he lived partly in the monastery and partly at home. However, when he wants to join the monastery at the age of 14, Zefiro refuses; Vango should first get to know the world before he binds himself. He sends him to his friend Hugo Eckener , who hires Vango as a kitchen boy and takes him on the Graf Zeppelin's trip around the world .

On this trip Vango met Ethel, a girl from Everland, Scotland. After the death of her parents, she and her brother Paul take part in the world tour in order to get other thoughts again, whereby Vango becomes very important to them. What else happens on the journey remains unclear in the first volume, but Vango has to flee.

The next episode in his life is the one with which the novel begins: in 1934 Vango waited in Paris in front of the Notre-Dame de Paris Cathedral to be ordained a priest. At that moment, the police show up to arrest Vango on charges of murder. Vango manages to escape, but now besides the Russian secret service, which has been pursuing him undetected for a long time, the French police under Commissioner Boulard are also after him. Ethel, who has traveled to Paris to meet Vango again, and Mole, a girl Vango met on his nightly walks over the rooftops of Paris, are also looking for him.

The Russian secret service penetrates Salina into Mademoiselle's apartment and kidnaps her to Russia in the hope that she and Vango will come into contact. In Paris, the Russian music student Andrei is forced to take part in the hunt for Vango and to monitor Boulard in his search for Vango.

Meanwhile, Zefiro leaves the invisible monastery and travels to Hugo Eckener to keep a promise he once made to friends he met on the battlefields of Verdun during World War I, namely the boxer puppet and the doctor Esquirol. He then travels to France to hand over arms dealer Voloi Viktor to justice - Zefiro was Viktor's confessor and is the only person who knows him so well that he can see through his masking. But the plan fails, Viktor escapes, and now his men also pursue Vango in order to find Zefiro through him.

On his escape through Europe, Vango finally came back to Salina, where he learned of the events that had taken place there upon his arrival 16 years earlier: The ship he, his parents and his wet nurse were traveling on was nearby raided the island by three men who robbed them and murdered his parents. Subsequently, leader Cafarello killed one of the accomplices and disappeared with most of the loot for the United States. The third robber, Mazzetta, brought Vango and Mademoiselle to safety, let them live in his house and took care of them as a repentant neighbor. Vango eventually gets Mazetta's share of the booty.

Prince without a kingdom

Vango travels to New York to look for Cafarello, the murderer of his parents, to learn more about his parents and himself from him. By chance he meets Zefiro in a moving express train, but also meets his pursuers. Zefiro brings him to safety, but has to let Viktor go. Vango supports Zefiro with his newly acquired fortune in pursuing Viktor, but at the same time is also looking for Cafarello. He has thoroughly covered his tracks and had a doppelganger executed in his place in Sing Sing . Vango is finally recognized while monitoring Viktor and flees back to Europe.

In Paris, Boulard is now also being blackmailed by agents of the Russian government who threatened to kill his mother if he did not hand them over Vango. When Mole finds out, she hides Boulard's mother under a false identity with Ethel in Scotland.

Meanwhile, Zefiro works with his friends Puppet and Esquirol on a new plan to kill Viktor. A bogus arms deal is supposed to lure Viktor to Europe, while Zefiro wants to kill him as a stowaway on the way back with the Zeppelin Hindenburg . Shortly before landing in Lakehurst, however, he realizes that Viktor is not on board himself, but has sent a doppelganger. Viktor, who is waiting for the airship on the ground, also discovers shortly before landing that the gun shop is a trap and fires a fire bullet at the zeppelin, causing the Lakehurst disaster . Zefiro suffers fatal burns, but before his death he manages to pass the corpse of a young man, who was also on board as a stowaway and was burned beyond recognition, as Vango's corpse in order to enable Vango, who was believed to be dead, to start again . Ethel, who was on board the airship and survived the disaster, is also deceived by it and suffers badly from the loss.

From a letter that Mademoiselle wrote to Vango, the reader learns the exact identity of Vango: As the son of Georgi Alexandrovich Romanov , he is the rightful candidate from the Romanov dynasty for the throne after the murder of the tsarist family .

Vango spends the war years in the monastery of La Blanche. Only mole knows he's alive; Through her he maintains contact with the Resistance . In 1942, by chance, he got on the guest list at a New Year's Eve party, to which not only high-ranking German occupiers and French collaborators were invited, but also Viktor and Cafarello. He decides to commit an attack on this celebration. Shortly afterwards he learns that the plane of Paul, Ethel's brother, was shot down over France. He travels to the crash site, meets the surprised Ethel and can save Paul with her. In Paris, Vango deposited a suitcase bomb in the New Year's Eve building and waited with Ethel in the restaurant's annex for the midnight explosion. Shortly before that, he recognizes from the menu that the cook must be his old nurse. He defused the bomb, Viktor and Cafarello leave the house unscathed. But Esquirol also found out about the celebration and its guests, he follows them and shoots them.

criticism

The reviews praised the suspense the novels provide. In the assessment of the jury of the youth literature award , it says: " Vango offers historical suspense for browsing in a linguistically powerful and extremely skillful translation."

The expressive characterizations of the people were also praised, for example the arrogant Inspector Boulard, who still lives with his mother and who gets his lunch from her every morning.

Some negative criticism was that the reader lost track of the many different storylines. Although the threads unite again at the end, at the end of the first volume they leave more questions unanswered than they answer.

The first volume was awarded the Prix ​​Ado-Lisant in Belgium in 2012 , in Austria it received the Toad of the Month for February 2012 and in Germany it was nominated for the Youth Literature Prize in 2012 .

expenditure

  • Timothée de Fombelle: Vango. Entre ciel et terre. Gallimard Jeunesse, Paris 2010. ISBN 978-2-07-063124-7 .
  • Timothée de Fombelle: Vango. Un prince sans royaume. Gallimard Jeunesse, Paris 2011. ISBN 978-2-07-063891-8 .
  • Timothée de Fombelle: Vango. Between heaven and earth. Gerstenberg, Hildesheim 2011. ISBN 978-3-8369-5365-8 .
  • Timothée de Fombelle: Vango. Prince without a kingdom. Gerstenberg, Hildesheim 2012. ISBN 978-3-8369-5476-1 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. a b Vango - German Youth Literature Prize. Retrieved December 29, 2012 .
  2. Ulf Cronenberg: jugendbuchtipps.de: Book review: Timothée de Fombelle “Vango - Between Heaven and Earth”. September 17, 2011, accessed December 29, 2012 .
  3. a b Sabine Hoß: Live books: Vango - Between heaven and earth. July 11, 2011, accessed December 29, 2012 .
  4. Prix Ado Lisant 2012. Retrieved on December 29, 2012 (French).
  5. stube - Toads 2012. Accessed December 29, 2012 .