Simple Stories

Schulze's book is an intriguing cross between a novel and a collection of short stories. Set in the small East German town of Altenburg, a group of main characters come up again and again, viewed from different perspectives. Communism is gone, "the West has come" (as East Germans like to put it), and people have more or less difficulty in adjusting to the new situation. In contrast to Gunter Grass, Schulze does not use his narrators as mouthpieces for his views on the transformation of his home, which makes his book a lot more believable and representative than many on the effects of German unification. No, sorry, this is not a book about any political process: It is a book about people. And their stories and obsessions are not confined to one moment in time or one place on earth. Much of this can happen in Maine just as well as in Magdeburg. Schluze is excellent at showing how spooky or meaningful the most mundane of incidences can sometimes be. His masterful arrangement of the "Simple Stories" keeps drawing you in, there is a mounting tension - and, as I must admit, a growing sense of depression. In one way or another, all of these people's lives seem to be going wrong. And yet they survive, so one may find the effect exhilarating as well, for while many characters fail to find a respectable place in a society which is alien to them, they assemble a biography which is all the more individual and interesting. Schulze has been hailed as one of the most interesting writers of the younger generation in Germany - not just by the critics, but by a large and loyal readership, too. The title of the book, which can be read a both German or English, hints at Schulze's American hero Raymond Carver. However, Schulze uses some of his techniques to compose a caleidoscopic picture of East Germany after the downfall of Communism - or of humanity after the big ideas?