While We Were Dreaming: Clemens Meyer

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On the longlist of 13 books, there are 11 languages represented—including, for the first time, Bulgarian, Catalan, and Tamil. In addition, author Maryse Condé becomes the oldest writer ever longlisted for the prize at the age of 86, and GauZ’, Zou Jingzhi, and Amanda Svensson scored nominations for their first-ever works to appear in English. However there is one semi redeeming factor and that’s the chapter about one character trying to use a microwave but even that is spoiled because all the narrator cares about is the porn mag his friend’s dad smuggles and the whole talk descends to mammary gland discourses!! On nights like that, I often think of Alfred Heller, the kid we called Fred. He had a face gone greyish blue from all the drinking, like ripe stilton. Fred was a couple of years older than us but he looked fifteen, wore these round glasses like a good little schoolboy, and then he’d joyride stolen or dirt-cheap cars without a licence, around our neighbourhood and all round town. Sitting in a car with him was weird because there was hardly any space, too many beer cans on every surface, and we did the craziest things on our nights out with him. Something happened to us when we got in a car with Fred, something made us lose all inhibitions, we felt this absolute freedom and independence we’d never known before, and we yelled it out; it was like the witch with five cats who lived next door to me had cast a spell on Fred’s beaten-up cars. Sometimes we used the rolled-down passenger window as a surfboard, holding onto the roof with one hand. It was like a merry-go-round after a bottle of Stroh 80. I understand that Meyer is portraying a type of mentality and social situation caused by so called freedom but to read the same thing over and over and over again is mind numbingly boring plus the constant sexism got to me. Yes you like boobs and looking up skirts. Fine but do we have to talk about it all the time.

Clemens Meyer’s great art of describing people takes the form of the Russian doll principle: a story within a story within a story. ... So much is so artfully interwoven that his work breaks the mould of the closed narrative.’ The Gospel According to the New World by Maryse Condé, translated by Richard Philcox (World Editions) Clemens Meyer has written in jumbled vignettes, skipping to and fro throughout the years so that at times it can become difficult for the Reader to place where we are in the boys lives and what age they must be. This confusion is often added to by the dawning realisation we come to as we read that the narrator here isn't necessarily particularly reliable. I felt that, as is often the case with young men like these who have something to prove and a reputation to build or maintain, some of these stories were perhaps exaggerated; or, a tale heard about someone else might have been co-opted and worked into their own 'Legend'. Then we also have the fact that liberal amounts of alcohol and much drug-taking are involved in the stories/memories recounted, which seemingly begins to build from the earliest age covered here to the point that around their mid-teens they seem to be existing in such a haze of substance abuse we can surely doubt much of what they seem to recall?

Advance Praise

The shortlist of six books will be announced at London Book Fair on 18 April, with the winner announced at a London ceremony on 23 May. Für mich war es zuerst schwer, mich daran zu gewöhnen, da es so auch keinen "roten Faden" gibt, an dem man sich festhalten kann, und mn es meist anders von Büchern gewöhnt ist. During the course of the book the German Democratic Republic ceases to exist and the Germany we now know comes into existence. You would barely know it from this book . Near the beginning (chronologically) but near the end (in the book) the boys inadvertently get caught up in a demonstration against the GDR. They only just manage to escape from the police thorough they are not really sympathetic towards the aims of the demonstration. References to the fall of the Berlin Wall and die Wende (i.e. reunification) are scant. Danny’s girlfriend leaves for the West with her parents. Mark’s parents get a microwave, something unheard of in the GDR. The police are a bit less brutal, However, on the whole, not much changes. Our narrator is Daniel Lenz (Dani in the (German version, Danny in the English one). Initially, during the GDR years, Danny seems to be a good Communist. He is a devoted member of the Pioneers, an East German youth organisation, and does well at school, He is seemingly well behaved and respected by his teachers. That is about to change.

Guadalupe Nettel’s Still Born is translated from Spanish by Rosalind Harvey, and is about two women grappling with whether or not to have children. Non è un regola quella per cui finisce col piacerci solo ciò che è a noi affine, a volte può capitare anche di essere catturati da ciò che invece può risultare distante da sé. Non ho più provato insofferenza e disagio, quando ho smesso di voler individuare un’aderenza con il mio essere; quando mi sono lasciato trascinare liberamente dagli eventi, facendomi risucchiare dal contesto, dall’evento più significativo della nostra Storia recente.Katy Derbyshire’s virtuoso performance does justice to every nuance and colloquialism of Meyer’s precipitous and stylish vortex of a novel.’ That thing about the boy’s mother, it’s not true. She got a job at a new Shell garage in 1992 and pretended not to recognize us when we bought beer or vodka or korn from her, because it was night and the shops were shut and the walls of the Leipzig Premium Pilsner Brewery were just too high sometimes. How does it feel to be longlisted for the International Booker Prize 2023, and what would winning mean to you? But the fathers vanish along with their jobs, and by the time the wall comes down, parents are well into dysfunctional alcoholism and physical abuse of each other and their children. Chronologically, the major events during the 10 years or so covered by While We Were Dreaming go as follows: Industry leaves, families dissolve, the wall comes down, schoolrooms get smaller as students leave with their parents to the West, those left behind form gangs, which leads to juvenile jail, death, and adult prison. How long did it take to write While We Were Dreaming, and what does your writing process look like? Do you type or write in longhand? Are there multiple drafts or sudden bursts of activity? Is the plot and structure intricately mapped out in advance?