The Invention of Curried Sausage

This is a believable end of WW II fairy tale, with an unexpectedly feminist twist. It's also a very fast read. Good work.

This was a touching and funny story. It was a fresh look at post-war Germany. I've had all my family and friends read it.

This is a melancholy read of friendship and coincidence. The novel's object is the discoverer of veal sausage with curried ketchup - still one of the most popular burger van menu items in Germany. The circumstances of the discovery, and the narrator's recollections in connection with it, form the frame for a tale of wartime romance against a backdrop of defeat and regeneration at the end of World War II.

Traveling back to his childhood neighborhood, the narrator meets with one of his mother's neighbors, who lived through WWII in Hamburg, one of the most devastated cities in Germany. Already as a child he bought curried sausage (Currywurst) from her - and by trying to unravel how this strange dish came to be, he discovers how one's woman life was changed... A small, poignant novella about love and loss, war and destruction, and the power of human connections... Uwe Timm is a German novelist and well-known children's book author. With a seemingly simple, but convincing style, he opens a small (fictive?) chapter about German lives at the end of WWII.

I read this book in its English translation, and I must congratulate the translator, because the imagery and themes shine through the language differences with quite possibly all of the original intent of Mr. Timm. To suggest that somebody could "invent" curried sausage is nearly as ridiculous a premise as suggesting that somebody could "invent" sex, but I believe that's what the author wants us to see here. The magic of inventing the ridiculous, with a farcical sprinkling of the dangerous, is an elixir that in the end helps the protagonists forget that war is hell.