Leipzig Book Fair – don’t laugh too early!

Zack, you have to write a book measurement text. So it goes to the ivory tower of the feature powder, which in Germany is understood to mean the culture part of a newspaper, what the Cuban embassy delegations guided by the ND editorial rooms now and then. Because nobody understands why the German culture is called a French word that rather means the gossip column in a newspaper (believing the Cubans).

Norway is the host country at the Leipzig Book Fair? In order to give the truth the honor, my great -grandfather Mauritz was an economic migrant from Malmö, so Swede. My competence is therefore easy to give the feature clapping part a complete literary unit, a Swedish joke: once the Swedes deported their stupidest husband to Norway. The average IQ rose in both countries.

Don’t laugh too early! The joke behind the joke is that the Norwegians on their part and again and again to deport their literary ramsch to Germany, where he is celebrated as a hottest shit when it is a delay. It was not long ago that you had to take care of injured book friends on the way to work in the morning who, the last Knausgård in the hand, were cycled in front of the next lantern. Or we remember the 90s, the time when it came into fashion, stare in books on colorful S-Bahn references for minutes, in the vague hope that a 3D picture may rise from the Kuddelmuddel. During this time, the triumphal procession of the author Jostein Gaarder, who had written a philosophy school book for eighth graders with “Sofies Welt”, was also welcoming as a literary revelation in Germany and soon, as “Die Möwe Jonathan”, was no longer missing on a shelf.

This is the literature of the Norwegians. Or at least what they show us. I have studied Scandinavistics for a few years and can assure: Norwegian literature, ancient and full -ranking abysses, thus has its way to hold the curious outside; Dealing with her is not entirely harmless. At the Scandinavian seminar in Göttingen, we had exactly a professor, the so -called chair owner. In the morning he appeared in the seminar well before the time and then, around eleven, with the never explained words “I have to” disappear again. This chair owner had dealt with Norwegian classics so persistently – they had influenced his brain: read the stories and novels that he had spoke on since the 70s, there were completely different things when he had known!

Since then I have known: to track down the Norwegian literature, it is necessary to find silent, an unfortunate path. At the dog meadow in Berlin I once got to know a Norwegian who was a pop star and her pug. The pop star had a very nice friend with whom I managed to make friends within a few years. On a café terrace near the Mauerpark we had one of the most beautiful conversations: Niko spoke English, help German and Norwegian, but I shone with fantasy English, Lübsch and slow-Swedish (so that the Norwegian came along). Jävlar, what a wonderful afternoon that was! The sun was adequately reserved, gradually I learned from the great book projects, which in the friendly, factual, fine blonde guy.

First, he would be over the legendary Bergen architect Leif Grung Writing that went to suicide in 1945. Had the Norwegian post-occupation company expired him? Was he collaborator of the Germans or was he a double agent? Did he help more to flee? Was he the victim of envy and intrigue? Niko had started to research this in a distinguished silent Bergens High Society, and it became a very nice book from the fact that you will never be read here in Germany, dear Bookmessen friend.

He also told me extremely touchingly about his grandfather’s fate, who deeply in a ship’s hull, in cutting, cold polar night, with infernal noise, absolute darkness and in a lack of fear of death, from a British battleship and was shot at German ships. Battle of the North Cape. It was only many decades later that Niko’s grandfather began to talk about it. And then it also became an impressive book.

So we sat and spoke – in front of an East Berlin block of houses, which today, according to rumors, should belong to the German poet and thinker Till Lindemann. I remembered Aksel Sandemose, the Norwegian classic that never really found to Germany because his dark grandiose works were either not at all or only badly translated: “Varulven”, for example, the werewolf. This is also about the German crew, it is about resistance and betrayal, impenetrable, deadly billing in the strudel with which old, evil regime went down and tore on all sides.

Then you know where you stand, in terms of literature, as a German. We have Kerkeling, cracking and toe, and we believe that we can have a say. And to give them a little bit of a say, dear Lesis and to satisfy their legitimate gossip thirst, I wrote to my other Norwegian, Kjetil, an extremely trustworthy man who has ever driven to Wolfsburg to cheer me on VfB Lübeck in a second division game. This Kjetil, today literary connoisseur of rank, reports: Unfortunately, he knows nothing about literary scandals, but there were recently the following remarkable books: Ingrid Storholmen, “Bloddråpetall”. Sigbjørn Skåden, “Planterhaug”. And Kathrine Nedrejord, seed problem.

So you first read here what you will never have read. And if you are honest, even me as a Swede: the Norwegians are already terribly nice people, really, but they never had an Agnetha falcon.