Post-unification novel divides Germany

By Bonn correspondent Caroline Wyatt

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In Germany `World Book Day' is being celebrated by the country's two thousand publishers and millions of keen readers. In a nation where the book trade's annual turnover totals more than $10 billion. While many of the books on the best seller lists are international thrillers by authors such as John Grisham, there have been some recent home-grown successes.

One book that has taken Germany by storm is by a young author born in the eastern city of Dresden, Ingo Schulze. The 35 year-old's second novel `Simple Stories' is, as the title suggests, a series of tales of life in the East after German unity.

After the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 Germany duly awaited a flood of novels dealing with the joys and sorrows of the reunion of East and West. But it waited in vain, with the exception of a massive tome by Guenther Grass, which many possess but few seem to have read, most authors have been strangly silent on the subject.

The debate over unification and its successes and failures has been conducted mainly in the media. But now eight years after German unity, a young eastern author, Ingo Schulze, has produced a novel that has become an unexpected best seller.

`Simple Stories', makes no great claims for itself. But in 29 chapters, each narrated by a different character, he weaves together a spellbinding tale of life in an East German province in 1990.

The stories are understated but powerful. In one the young waitress at a local cafe has her first sexual experience, an unpleasant one, with a salesman from West Germany. Meanwhile her parents, who may or may not have been collaborators with the secret police, take their first trip abroad to Italy.

Unsurprisingly the novel has divided Germany. Some reviewers have attacked it for being too simple, perpetuating the stereotype of poor, stupid East Germans being trampled on by the rich west. Others though disagree and are hailing Ingo Schulze as one of the best new writers in Germany today.