What You Can See from Here by Mariana Leky

First published in Germany in 2017; published in translation by‎ Farrar, Straus and Giroux on June 22, 2021

What You Can See from Here takes place in the German village of Westerwald. The story is narrated by Luisa, the granddaughter of Selma and Heinrich. She tells the story in three parts. The first focuses on the unsettled reaction of various villagers to the news that Selma dreamt of an okapi, a dream that always foretells a death. As they near the end of the time during which death is expected to claim one of them, the villagers tell each other truths that cannot later be unspoken.

The second part focuses on Luisa’s relationship with a Buddhist monk from Germany named Frederik who lives in a monastery in Japan. Frederik chats briefly with Luisa on a visit to Westerwald — she tells him every significant detail of her life in a single paragraph — and returns to spend time with her on a longer visit. Frederik gets to know all the villagers while doing his best (or not) to maintain a certain distance from Luisa. Whether the fate that brought them together will allow them to remain together is the novel’s plot driver.

The third part circles back to death, but this time death is presented not as something to fear, but as something to accept if everything goes smoothly, or even if it doesn’t. The love story of Luisa and Frederik is at least partially resolved, although perhaps not in a way that the reader will expect.

Luisa’s complicated family life adds to the novel’s humor. She never knew Heinrich, who built the crooked house in which she lives with her mother. Louisa’s father Peter is always traveling, perhaps in search of his father (a character points out that Heinrich’s death conveniently allows Peter’s search to occur anywhere in the world). Luisa’s mother is constantly fretting about whether she should leave Peter, suggesting an alternate explanation for Peter’s travels (“You can’t stay with someone who is always asking herself if she should leave you.”). She compromises by keeping company with the owner of the ice cream parlor, which isn't a bad choice.

We meet Luisa in her childhood when her best friend Martin is still alive. By the novel’s end, Luisa is in her thirties and the village is tolerating Martin’s father Palm, who has harnessed his demons but not his pain. Whether pain is meant to be endured or resolved is one of the novel’s themes, as reflected in the lives and experiences of several characters. Dr. Maschke believes that Peter suffers from encapsulated pain that is embodied in Alaska, a seemingly immortal dog that is devoted to Peter despite Peter’s rare appearances in the village. Palm learns to deal with his pain by boring villagers with quotations from the Bible. A villager named Marlies cannot bear company, including her own, but the villagers watch out for her despite her rejection of their companionship.

Death is obviously an additional theme, as is love. Luisa’s mother suggests that Luisa has linked them in her mind — that her conception of love is a form of death. She tells Luisa that love and death are “slightly different,” in that “a few people have returned from the kingdom of love.” A character known only as the optician has a secret love for Selma that he cannot reveal because inner voices tell him not to take the chance. He tries to tell Selma of his love in hundreds of letters but never makes it past the first sentence or two, sentences that set up a proclamation he fails to deliver.

Apart from Selma’s dreams of the okapi, little hints of magic appear at significant moments — a quiet stream suddenly roars, a moon shines more brightly than usual. Things fall when Luisa tells a lie. Heinrich’s sister Elsbeth is a source of home remedies (resting your forehead on the forehead of a horse cures headaches) but she has no protection against death.

The story is seasoned with the magic of laughter. I particularly enjoyed the fact that anyone calling Frederik’s monastery needs to engage with six monks, none of whom speak English, before Frederik finally comes to the phone.

The novel approaches questions of meaning and philosophy with tongue in cheek. The optician is obsessed with the question, “Is it true that something can disappear if we try to see it, but can’t disappear if we don’t try to see it?” The question seems very Zen, but Frederik doesn’t know what to make of it. The optician eventually devises an answer that he regards as illuminating. Frederik isn’t so sure, but he’s open to people finding their own path to enlightenment.

What you should do with yourself is the novel’s (and perhaps Buddhism’s) central question. Selma thought that “staying put was always exactly right.” Peter promised to stay put before he decided to travel the world instead. Luisa has always assumed that she would stay put until Frederik tells her that she was made to travel the seven seas — a description of her purpose that Luisa immediately rejects. By the novel’s end, after Frederik and Luisa have been corresponding for ten years, Luisa needs to decide how she wants to live her life.

Readers who love offbeat stories with quirky characters might want to put What You Can See from Here on top of their reading lists. It’s funny, charming, and insightful without making an obvious effort to be any of those things.

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Kraft by Jonas Lüscher

First published in Germany in 2017; published in translation by Farrar, Straus and Giroux on November 10, 2020

Kraft is the story of an intellectual named Richard Kraft. The story begins in the present, as Kraft is invited to America to compete with other scholars for a million-dollar prize. His task is to write and present an essay on “Why Whatever Is, Is Right and Why We Can Still Improve It.” Kraft understands the topic to be based on the proposition that we live in the best of all possible worlds — presumably because it was created by God — and that the best possible world is nevertheless permeated by evil, which suggests that evil can’t really be so bad. Or perhaps it is bad for the individual but necessary for the greater good of the whole. Kraft doesn’t agree with Alexander Pope’s thesis that “Whatever is, is right” — Kraft is no fan of theodicy — but he needs the million so he endeavors to craft an essay that will appeal to Tobias Erkner, who has funded the competition and will judge the competitors.

Kraft is a professor of rhetoric. Years earlier, as a student in West Germany, striving to stand out in intellectual circles, Kraft embraced neoclassical theory and market liberalism, the trickle-down notions of capitalism that were championed by Ronald Reagan’s advisors. Kraft understands that he has embraced ideas that are the economic equivalent of theodicy because they demand the acceptance of evil (in the form of poverty and injustice) as natural and beneficial to the greater good. He also understands that advancing in the intellectual world doesn’t require him to actually believe the ideas that he defends. As he struggles with his essay, Kraft knows he will need to dress up an economic system that repels him “with an aura of divine ordainment” because Erker is rich and will want to hear that his wealth is the outcome of a natural social order that recognizes his entitlement.

Flashbacks to and beyond Kraft’s student days tell of his friendship with István (a like-minded intellectual), his relationship with Ruth Lambsdorff (who fled without explanation, stimulating Kraft’s “vain craving for admiration”), his equally unsuccessful relationship with Johanna Hueffel (who, years later, takes issue with Kraft’s memory that she fled from him in anger), his past and present unhappy marriages and his ambiguous relationship with his children. Through all of this, Kraft sees himself as an honorable man, although it belatedly dawns on him that others might see him as a monster. In fact, he is neither or both. He would like the freedom of another divorce, but he can’t afford freedom unless he wins the million, a circumstance he finds shameful.

An undercurrent of comedy runs through the story. Usually understated, the comedy occasionally yields slapstick moments (Kraft being found naked in a field near Stanford after a “rowing adventure” is one example). István is almost a comic figure, a man who poses as a dissident intellectual who defected from Hungary when, in fact, he entered Germany as the shirt-washer for the Hungarian chess team and stayed behind when the bus left without him, the officer in charge having failed to notice his absence. The German obsession with David Hasselhoff also inspires some chuckles.

The moral question that Kraft must ultimately confront is whether he can dress up drivel as intellect — drivel he sees through and knows he cannot justify, despite his ability to advance arguments that purport to be honest — for money. Is the cost of being an intellectual sellout outweighed by the greater good of providing for his family? But this has been Kraft’s dilemma throughout his life. His dissertation extolled an economic system that he found repugnant and in which he had so little confidence that he spread the dissertation in all directions, welding on “any number of reinforcements and pointless rivets,” plastering it with his “stupendous knowledge of the relevant secondary literature,” and varnishing it with eloquent rhetoric to disguise its dishonesty.

Kraft is a fascinating novel because of its serious discussion of abstract philosophical concepts and their application to a concrete world. A dissenting voice (who doesn’t need the million dollars) argues that everything that is, is bad: rising nationalism, open acceptance of racism, the democratic election of despots, the embrace of anti-intellectualism and the “legitimation of ignorance,” the failure of countries like India and China to provide hope for a better future to their citizens. Kraft ponders an alternative view — that the coming Singularity that will advance humanity by merging real and artificial intelligence — but wonders whether the Singularity will lead to the enslavement of man by machine. It’s tough to be intellectually honest.

The novel’s humor doesn’t attempt to disguise the reality that world is a bleak place, for some more than others. The novel’s ending is also bleak, perhaps to drive home the point that sunny optimism alone can’t change reality. The ending struck me as something of a cop-out but it reflects a choice that, in a world of infinite choices, might be as valid as any other. Putting the ending aside, I admire Kraft for Jonas Lüscher’s willingness to confront the profound without forgetting that people of all intellectual levels muddle through their lives as best they can, struggling only occasionally (if at all) to make sense of it.

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The Marquise of O— by Heinrich von Kleist

First published in Germany in 1808; published in translation by Pushkin Press on January 7, 2020

From a modern perspective, this two-century old novella seems like the stuff of romantic comedy. A scholarly introduction by the translator, Nicholas Jacobs, advises the reader that the story was regarded as scandalous at the time of its publication. Certainly it is meant as drama rather than comedy — “operatic drama,” according to Jacobs — although Jacobs explains that the happy ending is uncharacteristic of Heinrich von Kleist, who apparently had a gloomy worldview that his other work reflects, no doubt accounting for Kleist’s eventual suicide. Whether the ending is happy by modern standards is something that the reader will need to judge.

The story is set in Northern Italy during the War of the Second Coalition at the end of the eighteenth century. European monarchies, fighting against Napoleon’s France, ultimately lost that war, but the Russian army won some campaigns in Italy during 1799.

The Marquise in the title is a widow named Julietta. She has a country house but, given the war, she finds it prudent to stay with her two children at the house of her parents. Her father, the Commandant, is ordered to defend the citadel in which his house is located. Russian troops overrun the citadel and order the Commandant to surrender, which he does as soon as the surrender can be made honorably. The surrender is accepted by a Russian Count who compliments the Commandant on his good manners. War at the time was apparently a civilized conflict between gentlemen.

While the fighting is ongoing, however, Russian soldiers capture Julietta and her mother. One of the soldiers subjects Julietta “to the most shameful mishandling” with the implied intent of having his way with her. Fortunately, the Count comes along and rescues the Marquise from the ungentlemanly assault. He apologizes to the Marquise on behalf of the culprits, then apologizes to the Commandant, who clearly holds the Count in high esteem. The Russians depart and the Commandant is once again free to do whatever aristocrats do when they are not fighting wars on behalf of their conquerors.

After some confusion about the Count’s possible death (leaving the Marquis “inconsolable that she had let the opportunity pass of throwing herself at his feet”), the handsome Russian returns, proclaims his devotion to the Marquise, and proposes marriage. The proposal is complicated by the fact of the Count’s military service, which remains to be discharged. The Commandant won’t have his daughter marrying a deserter, so the Count’s wooing is held in abeyance pending the Count’s efforts to wiggle out of his duty to his country.

The heart of the story begins when the Marquise finds herself “with child.” The bewildered Marquise, who knows how babies are made, is confident that she did not make one. Virgin birth having fallen out of fashion, however, her family is not only disinclined to believe her, but disowns her. “You are despicable!” her father says. “I curse the hour I bore you” and so on.

The story proceeds as a family drama, with the Marquise’s mother hatching a plot to reveal the identity of the baby’s daddy. At a later point, foreshadowed when the story begins, the Marquise resolves to place an ad in the newspaper, promising to wed the father if he will come forward and reveal himself.

Will the Marquise reconcile with her family? Will her honor be intact? Who is the rogue who made her pregnant? Will she marry him and, if so, can she possibly be happy? Kleist answers all of those questions. The answers are not surprising, given the literary and social conventions in effect when the story was written. The notion of an unmarried woman becoming pregnant is no longer scandalous to most modern readers, but the real scandal — the fact that the Marquise became pregnant without her consent — seems to have been lost on Kleist.

Viewed through modern eyes, the way in which the Marquise presumably became pregnant overshadows all else, but Kleist evidently viewed the crime as forgivable under the circumstances. It’s interesting to note the contrast between the “shameful mishandling” by a soldier and what Kleist evidently regarded as less shameful mishandling because it is attributed to love rather than lust. Times have changed for the better, but putting aside that shift in perspective, the story delivers the kind of suspenseful, eyebrow-raising melodrama that should hold a reader’s interest.

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The Club by Takis Würger

First published in Germany in 2017; published in translation by Grove Atlantic on March 12, 2019

The Club is a story of privilege and of how the privileged come to believe that society’s rules do not apply to them. It might seem over-the-top if not for recent revelations about Swarthmore fraternities that used date-rape drugs and maintained a “rape attic.” The Club is also about the malleable nature of truth, “the stories we keep telling ourselves until we believe they’re the truth.”

The Club is told in the first person from the perspectives of several characters. The primary character is Hans. He was picked on when he was a kid, so his father took him to the gym for boxing lessons. Learning to fight taught him to tolerate other people.

Hans becomes an orphan shortly after the novel begins. Some of the story is narrated by Hans’ Aunt Alex from England, who becomes Hans’ guardian. Alex teaches art history at Cambridge. She considers herself mad, so she sends Hans to a Jesuit boarding school in Germany rather than dragging him into her abyss. Hans studies, works on his boxing with a monk, and tries to ignore his loneliness.

After a time, Alex invites Hans to become a student at Cambridge and to join the Pitt Club. The club is not dedicated to the admiration of Brad Pitt, but consists of a group of privileged students, some of whom box. Alex wants Hans to infiltrate the club and help her find out who committed a crime, the nature of which she refuses to identify. To that end, Alex meets a mysterious woman (a grad student of Alex’s) named Charlotte. Her father is Alex’s ticket to an invitation to join the Pitt Club.

The wealthy, upper-class students who belong to the Pitt Club are instantly unlikeable. One of those, Josh, occasionally narrates a section. He thinks of himself as a decent chap and has no clue what a prick he is, oblivious to the impact on others of his elitist attitude and his inability to manage his anger.

Charlotte’s wealthy father, Angus Farewell, also narrates some sections. Peter Wong, a foreign student who wants to join the Pitt Club, is one of the more interesting narrators, if only because he keeps a daily log of (among other things) his masturbation.

A couple of the characters are a bit clichéd — the gay victim of homophobia, the American who emphasizes his patriotism and his Christianity (which is apparently the way British writers see all Americans) — and the story has a contrived feel, relying on one coincidence too many. As an indictment of the sense of empowerment that comes naturally to the privileged, however, the story also feels real. Some of that reality comes from details that Takis Würger no doubt gleaned from his own brief membership in the Pitt Club.

The story moves at a steady pace. Its ending is easy to foresee, but the ending is satisfying. The novel might be faulted for simplifying complex social issues surrounding privilege and women’s rights, but Würger’s heart is in the right place and the story is timely.

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To Die in Spring by Ralf Rothmann

Published in Germany in 2015; published in translation by Farrar, Straus and Giroux on August 29, 2017

On his deathbed, Walter’s mind returns to the war. Walter was a dairy farmer, just turning 18 and working for the Reich Food Estate thanks to his inability to shoot straight during his term in the Hitler Youth Corps. Unfortunately for Walter, the war is nearing an end and Hitler needs bodies to move forward and die, followed by more bodies who move forward and die, so Walter is drafted and sent to Hungary, where the Waffen SS is trying to stop the Russian advance. But because he has a driver’s license, Walter ferries supplies rather than fighting at the front. He fires only one shot during the war, but it is a shot he will never forget.

After Walter has a moment of heroism, he is rewarded with the opportunity to search for his cruel father’s grave. That quest takes him even closer to the Russian front, where the consequences of war are stark. Hopelessness pervades the novel. Civilians lose their homes and towns, deserters flee the front only to face execution. The Germans are fighting “a war for cynics, who don’t believe in anything but might makes right” — the same thinking that starts every war. The war pits enemy against enemy but also friend against friend when Walter is ordered to be “stronger than your own scruples.”

The horrors of war are seen from the perspective of soldiers fighting and dying for the losing side. Some of those horrors are inflicted by the soldiers, following orders from officers, on civilians suspected of being partisan, or just to satisfy their blood lust. And some horrors are inflicted on soldiers by their own officers, as the story illustrates in its most dramatic moment. Walter comes of age with an act that no teenager (or adult) should be forced to undertake, and then swallows that moment, concealing it deep within his being for the rest of his life — a fact that is revealed in the opening pages and again, indirectly, through song lyrics that Walter's son recounts in an epilog.

One of the story’s themes is that life moves on, even as individual lives end. Walter believes there will always be a need for milkers, but learns at the war’s end that he will soon be displaced by machines, his three years of training leading only to personal obsolescence. But change is inevitable and the brief time that Walter serves in the war brings about many changes in his life and country. Some of those changes he will live with until he dies, will make him welcome his own eventual death.

To Die in Spring is written (or translated) in smooth prose with no wasted words. It tells a small story at the end of a big war, developing the central character in depth and providing enough context in the atmosphere of war and supporting characters to make the story both convincing and compelling. To Die in Spring isn’t quite as atmospheric as All Quiet on the Western Front, but it conveys similar truths about war's impact on soldiers with nearly the same power.

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