A short literary sojourn of 126 pages depicting an Indian visiting professor in Berlin and his increasingly amorphous and alienated experiences away from home, not being a German speaker.
Impressions of the unnamed man center around his flat, a couple of acquaintances, including the exiled poet Faqrul, Birgit a vague romantic interest and the urban landscape. The man takes great care to locate himself in the city and is haunted by echoes of history in the now concrete consumer metropolis that is Berlin.
The story is not driven by plot or action. The tone of the pages is everyday and quiet, the man moves in a world that is both foreign and becoming a home in his memory. The narrator introduces an unreliability which is echoed in the man and his increasingly persistent attempts to feel safe and located, taking consolation in the flat and meals. His world seems to be small and getting smaller.
Is he temporarily loosing his grip, or just disconcerted by the foreign location and the historic echo of the place blended with a bland modern ennui? This seems to be strongly reflected in comments people have written about this book, which is fascinating. Generally commentators seem reluctant to accept, or state, that the man, who is older, is suffering from a shift in progressive memory loss. However, the book even signals this with increasing white spaces, some pages near the end only have four lines of text.
A confusion and loneliness is evoked, “I’m looking for some kind of confirmation” and “Calm dreariness reigns”. What is happening to the man is quietly tragic as he settles for small and smaller consolations and rationalisations of his shrinking capabilities.
The book is written as a succession of micro scenes told in compact description and dialogue. One way or another the story is about memory, communication, what is gone, the unknown future and a grey present. As the writing of memory loss it is effectively perceptive and disconcerting.
Mark's Reviews 