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Elke Heidenreich, author and book critic
Claire Keegan is in.
She is in her mid-50s. And she writes such fine, subtle, profound and ambiguous books that Steidl Verlag is the right place for her.
Not only does he do intellectually brilliant and crazy things, he also designs them one of the most beautiful things.
If we now think away Lothar Schirmer from Schirmer and Mosel for a moment.
At Steidl, everything is always elegant: the print, the paper, the cover photo.
Take a look: linen binding.
Claire Keegan "The Third Light." This author is a perfect match for Steidl Verlag.
The slim book tells a heartbreaking childhood story.
A puberty girl drives through Ireland with her silent father in the morning, through the villages to a village where distant relatives live.
she is given away
because at home the mother is pregnant again.
The next child is expected, and there she stands in the way.
And then she's supposed to go to relatives for a while.
You don't even know each other.
And then she gets there with her father, who tries to get away as quickly as possible and even forgets to unload her suitcase.
And she comes into a completely different world.
She comes into a world where a married couple treats each other with love, talks to each other, sits at the table and eats together, where they also treat her well, treat her well, grow fond of her, into a luminous world in which the child immerses herself, who she didn't know at all.
who tries to get away as soon as possible and even forgets to unload her suitcase.
And she comes into a completely different world.
She comes into a world where a married couple treats each other with love, talks to each other, sits at the table and eats together, where they also treat her well, treat her well, grow fond of her, into a luminous world in which the child immerses herself, who she didn't know at all.
who tries to get away as soon as possible and even forgets to unload her suitcase.
And she comes into a completely different world.
She comes into a world where a married couple treats each other with love, talks to each other, sits at the table and eats together, where they also treat her well, treat her well, grow fond of her, into a luminous world in which the child immerses herself, who she didn't know at all.
She is taken seriously, she gets new clothes, she helps out a bit, but she doesn't have to work like she does at home.
And we can already guess: it gets all the more bitter when one day her father comes and picks her up again, just as silently as he unloaded her, and takes her home again.
Into a home where there is now one more child and where everything is rugged and poor.
And it breaks our hearts that she has to go back there.
Because we also know from Annie Ernaux, Didier Eribon, from Édouard Louis, but also from people like Christian Baron or Behzad Karim Khani, how important origin is and how much it matters what kind of family you come from and how few opportunities you have in life when you come out of a house like this girl who has to go back home.
And the book tells it so finely with so many nuances and with such virtuosity that reading it almost takes your breath away, from everything that basically remains unsaid in this small book.
Terrific.
And then I have something old for you today.
In those days, I actually had more of a pamphlet than a book fluttering into my house.
Farber & Farber is the name of the publisher.
The illustrations are by Vera Gericke.
And it's just five short stories by Émile Zola, all about death.
The title "As you live, so you die" says it all.
So I die surrounded by wine bottles and books.
Funny - somehow, sometime on my piano or something.
But here, he says: whoever is stingy dies in such a way that when he dies he still has the key to the pantry under his pillow.
Whoever was poor dies poor.
And he tells, for example, about a married couple, very rich, very good circumstances, but this married couple doesn't care at all, they don't pay any attention to each other.
And now the man is dying.
And while he's being driven to the cemetery, with 1000 hearses and candles and flowers, people are already talking and telling jokes and anecdotes.
And no one thinks about him in any way and everyone is standing at the grave and wanting to leave as soon as possible.
And the wife didn't even come along.
She's lying on the sofa at home, pretending to be unwell and inconsolable and sad.
But in reality she thinks well, now he's dead, now a nice new life begins.
This is a wonderful book.
Five short stories, early short stories by Émile Zola, who we know was a brilliant journalist.
He was also a left-wing activist, a friend of Flaubert and Turgenev.
And here, in this small piece of prose, one can already see the mastery of his later great works.
These are simply little lessons that warn of what avarice, poverty, greed and indifference can do to people, namely poisoning life and even death.
A little treasure, lovingly designed.
And if someone else had proofread it and found two or three stupid typographical errors, it would be even nicer.
So that's it for today.
Spring production is rolling, we're staying on the ball.