David Grossman: More than I Love My Life (transl. into German by Anne Birkenhauer)

 

Included on the 2022 International Booker Prize Longlist, More Than I Love My Life (transl. into English by veteran Hebrew to English translator Jessica Cohen)/Was Nina wusste (transl. into German from Hebrew by Anne Birkenhauer) is a multi-generational women story. Vera, originally from Yugoslavia, now in her 90s and at the beginning of Alzheimer´s, is back to the feared Goli Otok Island, the Adriatic Alcatraz where she was imprisoned and tortured for refusing to betray her non-Jewish husband, involved in the anti-Tito resistance. The return is part of a movie, her granddaughter Gili is making about her, and her daughter, Nina, who abandoned Gili when she was 3, is also taking the trip.

The novel is inspired by the story of one of Grossman´s confidante and I felt actually that this story has the emergency of writing down before it is too late, before the story is lost. Therefore, although it is far from being a short read, there are some parts which look like they were either wrote too fast, and therefore, not all the details come along together and the characters may have less depth. In other places, the emotional aspects take over the prose and it is not necessarily in the advantage of the writing.

Nevertheless, there is a certain attraction of the writing, as usual in the case of Grossman´s books, although personally I feel like his last books are somewhere floating on a sea of incertitudes and the characters look like unfinished paintings. 

Rating: 3 stars

About ´Fate´ by Zeruya Shalev (translated into German by Anne Birkenhauer)

 

Fate (translated into German as Schicksal by Anne Birkenhauer, who translated among others David Grossman or Yehuda Amichai) is from all the books by Zeruya Shalev I´ve read until now, the most Israel-oriented. All of her books are taking place in Israel and do include elements of the everyday life in the country, particularly terorist threats or the religious context, but the main topics mainly have to do with relationship, betrayal, love and pain (the book before, Pain was by far my favorite, for the complexity of the characters and the surgical precision exploring suffering).

Fate - that was completed during the Covid pandemic - has a completely different spin and is partly inspired by Shalev´s own family history, namely her father´s. After the death of her father, a famous brain researcher, Menachem (Mino) Rubin, her daughter, Atara wants to find out the woman her father was married before, Rachel. Atara, an architect specialized in historical monuments, lives in Haifa (like Shalev herself). Rachel, whose son is a Breslev hasid, met Atara´s father during their time in Lechi, an armed group active during the British Mandate whose aim was, among others, to push the Brits out of the country, with any price. 

Most of the book is an exploration of memory, the ways in which we remember. Memory is an emotional business and its authenticity is at a large extent doubtful. The names of the Lehi members killed are repeated in the story as a mantra. Likewise, the story of the doll stucked with explosive who blew up. For many reasons, the history of Lehi in the creation of the state of Israel is rarely mentioned openly - compared to Irgun or Palmach, for instance. In the account include in Fate, they look like promoters of a Jewish-Arab entente and co-existence, with the only enemy being the Brits, which is a too edulcorated and romanticized version for my taste. I would have loved much more a rough version of a Lehi member, maybe confused, violent, idealistic, but more authentic than by being assigned ideas and intentions that just resonate with current political concerns. This distorted voice is a big pity for the overall representation of Lehi, given that they were, in fact, a very interesting movement, to be understood and placed in the equally complex context of the times.

I had access to the book in audiobook format, read by actressed Maria Schrader and Eva Meckbach. 

Rating: 3 stars