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Literature newcomer Jonas Eika: people on the edge of the end of the world

2020-08-20T08:34:39.586Z


The young Danish author Jonas Eika destroys certainties: his book "After the Sun" gains explosive power from the longing for a completely different world - and expands the concept of fiction.


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Author Jonas Eika: He says what he wants and has to say

Photo: 

Aphinya Jatuparisakul

No poet has taken the stage with such force in a long time. Jonas Eika is a Dane, 29 years old. In the author's portrait in the book he has short green hair, glass earrings and a leopard shirt. In 2019 he was awarded the prestigious Nordic Council Literature Prize for his volume of short novels, "Nach der Sonne", which is currently being published in German.

He used the speech in the festive setting to accuse the present Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and her social democratic party of state racism. Frozen and applause in the festive hall. Eika on stage, nervous, almost fearful, but determined, he keeps scratching his neck with his red-painted fingernails. He says what he wants and must say.

The language of his novels is of great urgency, fragility and beauty. The stories take place in different places, in the city center of Copenhagen, in Bucharest, the desert of Nevada, the beaches of Cancun and in the air. Lonely, loving, lost in this world are the people Eika writes about. Half ghosts, with one leg in our reality, with the other in a fantasy world that they imagined in their dreams or nightmares.

The yin and yang of capitalism

"I reached Copenhagen sweaty and standing halfway next to me after an extremely fictional flight." This is how it begins. Beautiful and puzzling: "Extremely fictional" - we soon learn what that means. How you can "fictitiously" increase, how many different fictions you can live through on such a journey in heaven and in which new fiction you end up, for example.

The first-person narrator is an IT consultant, stranded in Malaga, he is repeatedly called to work in Copenhagen. In a bank, for example, to "maintain the system". This time the bank has unfortunately disappeared, we don't know why, disappeared in a crater, probably an explosive attack. It doesn't matter much.

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Writer Eika: "Brother, you must never leave me again"

Photo: Aphinya Jatuparisakul

But the opportunities that arise from that matter. He meets Alvin, an investment banker, affectionate, fond of travel, magnetic, rich. He lets the narrator take part in his derivative trades, betting on a fictional future of all the world's products. Every future can be forecast and bought. Alvin knows how it goes. How to make a profit and how to erase the awareness that every sum you earn yourself is losing someone at the same time. The yin and yang of capitalism.

It is important to erase the knowledge of the losers: "That it was possible to simply retouch them from the picture, by virtue of an act of will that is carried out slowly and hidden in oneself until at some point only one's own victory exists . "

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Title: After the Sun: Tales

Publisher: Hanser Berlin

Pages: 156

Author: Jonas Eika

Translation: Ursel Allenstein

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The bottom line of Eika's prose fluctuates: a moment ago everything was completely realistic and present, suddenly a journey through time has happened. The first-person narrator says he has never been to Bucharest - in the next sentence he is already there: "For about ten seconds I was in a funnel of time, at the other end of which I only saw myself."

Briefly he is rich in Bucharest, briefly he is lovers with Alvin, briefly he says to his lover in Romanian: "Brother, you must never leave me again" without even knowing what he is saying. In the end he is again without money and without Alvin in the ruins of the bank in Copenhagen, the system administrator sits in the lotus position in the center. The destroyed world lives on.

People with a soul vacuum

Later we are with lawless, very young beach boys on the beaches of Mexico, rich, fat, insensitive tourists cream and have to fan them; we are in the desert with an elderly couple, whose two daughters have died - looking for contact with aliens and the desire to unite with nature. Lonely in the sun.

It is said about the boys that they have "a hole in them". This applies to all the people Eika describes. People with a soul vacuum on the edge of the end of the world. In incredibly beautiful language, translated into German by Ursel Allenstein.

At the end of the book, Eika mentions William Burroughs and Roberto Bolano as sources of inspiration for his prose. The language and plot of the semi-fictional world of desire also remind German readers of Hans Henny Jahnn's "Night of Lead" or Christian Kracht's "I'll be here in the sunshine and in the shade".

Above all, however, Eika's prose has a very original force, which is nourished by the longing for a completely different world: "And it is as if the beauty of all things passes into my body and becomes a pain that keeps the hole open. I think: The sea is beautiful without the gift of remaining turquoise and postcard-like all the time. Beautiful, without the will to spare the ships that sail on it at night. An infinite, fluid substance made of complete indifference. "

Nice - without the will to spare the ships. The sea doesn't care who it drowns.

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Source: spiegel

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