Ten tips to stop the killing and start washing dishes
Ten tips to stop killing and start washing dishes (Icelandic original title: 10 ráð til að hætta að drepa fólk og byrja að vaska upp ) is a novel by the Icelandic author Hallgrímur Helgason . It is about the Croatian hit man Toxic , actually Tomislav Bokšić, who lives in New York , who has to go into hiding after the murder of an FBI agent and so comes to Iceland through some entanglements .
The novel was published in Iceland in 2008 and a translation by Kristof Magnusson was published in Germany in 2010 by Tropen Verlag, which is part of Klett-Cotta Verlag .
General and formal structure
The novel is divided into 35 numbered and titled chapters. The entire book is reproduced from the perspective of the protagonist Toxic as a first-person narrator , who reproduces the concrete actions as well as his thoughts and memories as an inner monologue . The story takes place as a single narrative thread in the chronological order of the events, from which various reviews and thoughts break out.
The book has a dedication on the cover : "For Barbara Taylor". Chapter “25. Grannys ” quotes two verses from the poem“ Freedom ”by the Croatian poet Danijel Dragojević :
"Svatko tko je putovao zna da se jabuke nigdje ne jedu
kao na ulici i trgu nekog stranog gradu"
on the street or in a square in a strange city
In addition, short passages from songs are quoted at various points in the novel, for example when Justin Timberlake is playing on the car radio or the Icelandic family watches the Eurovision Song Contest together .
The action of the novel begins in New York City in the United States and then takes place mainly in the Icelandic capital Reykjavík and some suburbs. The plot begins in May 2006 a few days before the Eurovision Song Contest 2006 and ends almost exactly one year later on the day of the Eurovision Song Contest 2007 , when the Serbian winner Marija Šerifović performs her winning song a second time after her victory. The author also refers in numerous retrospectives to the Croatian War of Independence from 1991 to 1995, in which the protagonist participated as a young soldier, as well as to fictional events during his time as a hit man.
action
Toxic , actually Tomislav Bokšić, is a hit man who works for the Croatian mafia in New York. He also works as a waiter at "The Zagreb Samovar", the meeting place for the Croatian Mafia in New York, and has a sexual relationship with the Peruvian Munita. He is very successful in killing and has a record of 65 successful murders; he is proud to be a triple six-packer , that is, to have murdered a person three times with six consecutive bullets each time.
The action starts in New York
When Toxic unknowingly shoots an FBI officer in Murder No. 66 and is almost caught, he decides to flee to Zagreb and go into hiding. For this he has a Russian passport issued. At the New York airport he discovers that he is already wanted and changes his plans. In the men's room he kills a man of similar stature and decides to take on his role - it is the preacher Father Friendly, who is on his way to Iceland to appear on a Christian television station.
In Iceland
When he arrived in Iceland, he mixed up his passports and entered the country as a Russian, but shortly afterwards was received as Father Friendly by the Icelandic Guðmundur Engilbertsson - in the novel later only Gutmunduhr - and his wife Sigriður Ingibjörg Sigurhjartardóttir - in the novel Zickrita. They take him home and offer him their hospitality. During her absence, Toxic looks around the house and takes a bath. Shortly afterwards, Gunnhildur, the daughter of the house, storms into the apartment and looks for a key to her apartment because she has locked herself out. Toxic offers her his help to open the door and she takes him to Reykjavík, where he opens the door. After that, he passes the time until evening in the city and gets drunk in a café in the city center until Gutmunduhr picks him up for the show. As Father Friendly, he discusses with Gutmunduhr in front of the camera and tells a fictional story of his calling to the church and the alleged missionary work in Yugoslavia during the reign of Tito .
Toxic later drives back to their apartment with his hosts. Over the next few days he visits several churches and initiatives with Gutmunduhr and Zickrita. The family meets at the weekend to watch the Eurovision Song Contest 2006 together. Here he also gets to know Tröster, the supposed brother of Gunnhildur. In the middle of the Croatian contribution by the singer Severina , the police rings the doorbell and Toxic disappears through the garden. He escapes with a stolen car and breaks into a house. There he later pretends to be a craftsman and stays over the weekend. He then flees on to Gunnhildur and Tröster's apartment. Toxic tells Gunnhildur the truth about his identity. She hides him in the attic, and later they start a sexual affair.
After a week in Iceland, Toxic tries unsuccessfully to call Munita and later asks the doorman of his apartment in New York about her. He instructs him to check his apartment. When he phoned him again an hour later, the porter explained to him that he had found the head of Munita's body in the refrigerator. Toxic collapses and leaves Gunnhildur's apartment. He walks aimlessly through Reykjavík, trying to throw himself in front of a truck and kill himself. He was seriously injured in the process, but survived the fall from the bridge and fought his way to Gutmunduhr's house, where he was taken in. Gutmunduhr and Zickrita decide to hide it and, together with their friend Thórður - known from Toxic Tortur - to convert for good. After his “treatment”, Gutmunduhr provided Toxic with a new Icelandic passport with the name Tómas Leifur Ólafsson, and they arranged for him to stay in the “Hardwork Hotel”, an accommodation for foreigners. He shares the building with Poles, Lithuanians and a Bulgarian named Balatov. Gutmunduhr also gets Toxic a job as a dishwasher in a kitchen for the poor, where he meets the racist cook Óle, who was previously imprisoned for manslaughter, and becomes friends with him.
The affair with Gunnhildur flares up again after she visits him at his home. They find a love nest in an Indian furniture store, where they meet regularly and have sex. On a weekend they drive to the country together and Gunnhildur asks Toxic if he could imagine a life in Iceland and with her. He hesitates and they get into an argument, after which she drives him back to his room. Shortly afterwards there is an incident in the “Hardwork Hotel”: A Lithuanian who swallowed condoms with cocaine as a drug courier dies, and a scuffle ensues . When the Lithuanians take their colleague away, Toxic gets a pistol from their room. Shortly thereafter, there is a raid in which Toxic informs the police about the incident without being recognized. Shortly afterwards he moves out of the hotel and moves in with Gunnhildur. One night, Comforter tries to kill him. Toxic learns that he was not her brother but her friend. In the ensuing argument, Gunnhildur reveals to him that she is pregnant.
After a year in Iceland, there will be another family reunion for the Eurovision Song Contest in May , together with Tortur, Óle and their wives. Gunnhildur is heavily pregnant, and after last year's winners, the Finnish band Lordi with their hard rock Hallelujah , as well as other bands performed their songs, the doorbell rings again at the Croatian contribution of the singer Dado Topić , and Gutmunduhr asks Toxic to the door. There he is received by his mafia colleagues Niko and Radovan, who are given the task of killing him. They drive him to the country and tell him what happened after his escape. When they want to kill him, they allow him one last cigarette. Toxic manages to overpower her with his pistol and flee back to Gutmunduhr's house shot. On the way he thinks of Gunnhildur and his former Serbian girlfriend Senka, whom he met a few weeks earlier in Reykjavík and with whom he also began an affair; she was also pregnant by him and he wishes that his children get to know each other. He reaches the house when the Serbian winner Marija Šerifović sings her contribution again and collapses amidst family and friends.
Looking back on life as a hit man
In many situations Toxic describes his life as a hit man and introduces individual episodes. These relate either to the individual murders he carried out on behalf of the Croatian mafia or to his relationships, especially with his last girlfriend Munita. After learning of Munita's murder, he remembers his murders in detail and counts them one by one. His own unsuccessful suicide is counted as number 68.
Later he has to re-portray the stories of his murders on his conversion, and Hanna, the woman of torture, asks him to write letters to the relatives of his victims.
Review of the Croatian War of Independence
During the plot and especially towards the end of the novel, thoughts regularly wander into the past, when Tomislav Bokšić fought as a young soldier in the Croatian War of Independence. Numerous disturbing events come to light that he had to deal with and that he regularly thinks about, such as the times in the trenches and the deaths of numerous comrades, the work digging mass graves and the search for glasses for the supervisor between the corpses.
The Eurovision Song Contest also plays a role in looking back when Tomislav and his comrade Andro spent a night in a burned-out Serbian tank and drank a bottle of rakija with him . When a drunk Serbian soldier checked the tank, they were singing together the song Rock Me by the Yugoslav band Riva , which had won the Eurovision Song Contest in 1989 . The Serb sat down next to them, without recognizing the Croatian uniforms, and drank and sang together with them - later Andro came out that he was gay and satisfied the other two men with his hand . Andro was later shot and killed by Javor, a lieutenant in the Croatian troops, while freaking out over breakfast.
He describes the worst moment of his life (ASM) in the death of his father, whom he accidentally shot himself on his first night on the war front because he believed he was an attacking Serb. That same night, his brother Dario also died at the front, which "somehow" helped him cope with having shot his own father. Later in the novel, however, he describes a second worst moment when, while investigating a house, he met his former Serbian friend Senka in a soldier's uniform and later had to watch her being raped by his comrades.
reception
The novel was published on November 4, 2008 under the original title 10 ráð til að hætta að drepa fólk og byrja að vaska upp at the JPV publishing house in Reykjavík . For the German edition it was translated from Icelandic by Kristof Magnusson and was published in 2010 by Tropen Verlag, which belongs to Klett-Cotta Verlag . In 2011 it appeared there in the meanwhile 5th edition. The dtv Verlagsgesellschaft also launched the book as a paperback on the German market in September 2011. In 2012 the novel was released in the United States under the title The Hitman's Guide to House Cleaning by Amazon Crossing.
The novel was discussed in numerous media, with the evaluation being largely positive. The novel is compared primarily with earlier novels by the author such as 101 Reykjavík , The Doubtful Pleasure of Being Dead and Rokland . In the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , Wiebke Porombka described the novel as "the weirdest and most abysmal novel" of Hallgrímur Helgason, "which is even weirder, faster and much shorter than his previous ones". Klett-Cotta Verlag itself advertises the novel by stating that it is “even faster, more exciting and even funnier than its predecessors” and describes it as “a weird story on the edges of Europe”. At the 2010 Frankfurt Book Fair , the book was awarded the prize for the most curious book title of the year .
The absurdity and ostensible comedy of the novel and the plot are in the foreground in most of the reviews and are regarded as the trademark of the Icelandic author, "who has always had a weakness for crooked male figures and dramaturgies." Helga März, reviewer for Deutschlandfunk, confirms the novel a "helgasontypischen scratched, tending to literary silliness narrative sound" and tells the story of the protagonist as "paved with screwball comedy -haften confusion and Quentin Tarantino -haften action ideas." on the American director Tarantino takes Ralf Kramp in his review in Focus Reference: "It almost reads like a script by Quentin Tarantino."
According to Welt, Helgason “succeeded in a new trick, a social novel that wonderfully mixes comedy and seriousness.” Die Welt also attests to Helgason's “strong sense of shrill constellations that allow him to combine satirical elements with socially critical aspects” and also praises him the translator Kristof Magnusson, who, like Karl-Ludwig Wetzig , “manages to bring the speed and the fireworks of images of his language into an adequate German.” According to Deutschlandfunk, Magnusson has translated the novel “into a German with a punch and style”.
Subtle horror
In addition to the superficial serenity and comedy, the subtle processing of the war trauma and the guilt feelings of the protagonist naturally also play a central role, which comes to the fore due to his situation. According to FAZ, he is "thrown into his own past, which he thought he had packed airtight into statistics, unawares and with the help of his Christian hosts."
Helgason succeeds in coming to terms with “the linguistic force with which he continually lets wit and horror collide without the former being slackened in favor of the latter”, without it becoming “kitschy or banal.” The joke machine rattles on even as the reader hits The horror picture has not yet understood, without her "it would be unbearable, neither for Toxic nor for the reader". Helgason "uses the paradoxical flipping between humor and horror to tell a traumatization that in the crystal-clear light of Iceland almost tries to appear unreal again."
statistics
The habit of the main character to process his life and his assessments in statistics is taken up by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung: “With the help of one statistic, he determines the degree of attractiveness of every woman he comes across: on which day he starts from her dream, would she be the only female in his unit locked in the mountains for a month? With the second statistic he records the murders he has committed so far. ”According to Wiebke Porombka, the statistics primarily serve to have the past“ airtightly packaged in statistics ”and made“ manageable and thus unrecognizable ”.
Viewing Iceland and the Eurovision Song Contest
Following the review of the world, Helgason uses a "simple trick" to "look at his homeland Iceland" with strange eyes and to spear things that are supposed to be taken for granted. "He describes the country and its inhabitants in 2006 and thus before the financial crisis . He describes an island world in which the residents bask in their wealth and Reykjavík has the reputation of a “party metropolis for Western European weekend tourists” and where the “buttery blonde ice queens” drive through the streets in large vehicles. Ursula März also points out that the novel "behind all the craziness and jokes [is] a literary ethnography of one's own country", which Helgason sees "through the alienated gaze of a Croatian professional killer."
The Eurovision Song Contest, which sets the time frame in the novel and also plays a role in terms of content, is in this context. For Icelanders, it is a "national event that draws 99 percent of all Icelanders in front of the television screen [...] whose reputation in the land of elves and geysers is not even surpassed by Christmas holidays."
expenditure
The Icelandic author Hallgrímur Helgason first wrote his novel in English as The Hitman's guide to housecleaning and then translated it himself into Icelandic, the first edition was in Reykjavík in 2008.
- Hallgrímur Helgason: 10 ráð til að hætta að drepa fólk og byrja að vaska upp JPV Útgáfa, Reykjavík 2008
- Hallgrímur Helgason: Ten Tips to End the Killing and Start Washing Up. (German translation by Kristof Magnusson ), Tropen Verlag, Stuttgart 2010, ISBN 978-3-608-50108-7
- Hallgrímur Helgason: Ten Tips to End the Killing and Start Washing Up. (German translation by Kristof Magnusson) dtv 2011, ISBN 978-3-423-21318-9
Translations worldwide
- The book has also been translated into numerous other languages
- Italian: Toxic , Milano 2010
- Norwegian: Håndbok i husstell til leiemordere , Oslo 2010
- Danish: Lejemorderens guide til et smukt hjem , Copenhagen, 2010
- Polish: Poradnik domowy kilera. jak przestać sprzątać ludzi i wziąć się za zmywanie , Gdańsk 2010
- Russian: Советы по домоводству для наемного убийцы (Sowjety po domowodstwu dlja najemnogo ubijtsa) , Saint Petersburg 2010
- Czech: 10 rad nájemného vraha, jak vyčistit kvartýr , Praha 2011
- Korean: 살인 청부업 자 의 청소 가이드 (Sarin ch'ŏngbuŏpcha ŭi ch'ŏngso kaidŭ) , translated from Chong-yu Paek, 들녘, Kyŏnggi-do P'aju-si: Tŭllyŏk, 2012, ISBN 978-89-7527-622 -4 .
- French: Le Grand Ménage du tueur à gages , Paris 2014
- It was published in English as The Hitman's guide to housecleaning in Las Vegas 2012 and also as an audio book: Grand Haven 2012.
Web links
- Ten tips to end the killing and start washing dishes at Klett-Cotta Verlag / Tropen Verlag
- Ten tips to stop the killing and start the washing up in the dtv publishing company
- Review notes at perlentaucher.de
supporting documents
- ↑ Hallgrímur Helgason: Ten Tips to End the Murder and Start Washing the Dishes. 5th edition, Tropen Verlag Munich 2011; P. 73 ff.
- ↑ Hallgrímur Helgason: Ten Tips to End the Murder and Start Washing the Dishes. 5th edition, Tropen Verlag Munich 2011; P. 210.
- ↑ Hallgrímur Helgason: Ten Tips to End the Murder and Start Washing the Dishes. 5th edition, Tropen Verlag Munich 2011; P. 268.
- ↑ Hallgrímur Helgason: 10 ráð til að hætta að drepa fólk og byrja að vaska upp [1. Chapter] . In: Lesbók Morgunblaðsins . November 8, 2008, p. 3 ( online at timarit.is ): "Ný skáldsaga eftir Hallgrím Helgason, 10 ráð til að hætta að drepa fólk og byrja að vaska upp, kemur út á þriðjudaginn."
- ↑ a b c d e f g Wiebke Porombka: Sorry, the black list is only for regular guests. Book review in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , April 8, 2010; Retrieved September 26, 2015.
- ↑ Ten tips to end killing and start washing dishes at Klett-Cotta Verlag / Tropen Verlag
- ^ The most curious book title 2010. Der Tagesanzeiger, October 7, 2010; Retrieved September 27, 2015.
- ↑ a b c Ursula March: Return to Reykjavik . Book review at Deutschlandfunk , May 19, 2010; Retrieved September 27, 2015.
- ↑ Ralf Kramp: Chilled under the midnight sun. Book review in Focus , February 23, 2010; Retrieved September 27, 2015.
- ↑ a b c d e Helgason starts washing up. Book review in Die Welt , April 3, 2010; Retrieved September 27, 2015.
- ↑ Hallgrímur Helgason in gegnir.is