The Short End of the Sonnenallee

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Join author Thomas Brussig, and translators Jonathan Franzen and Dr. Jenny Watson for a panel discussion of the book and its surrounding historical context. Joining them in conversation will be Dr. Alison Efford and Dr. Sebastian Luft. He co-wrote the screenplay for a movie of the same name, which had some success (I haven't seen it), and he later wrote this book, claiming that he had some ideas he wasn't able to wedge into the movie. I shall take him at his word... Brussig shows the proper restraint in this novel -- unlike his earlier, more obvious efforts, where the humour sometimes is too heavy-handed.

German author Thomas Brussig’s novel, The Short End of the Sonnenallee, is a novel set in Communist East Germany in the decade before the fall of the Berlin Wall. It is a rich, at times funny, at times sad, account of a group of interrelated individuals living in the shadow of the Berlin Wall, as the regime is showing signs of decay from within. Visiting relatives from the other side bring them Western goods, at considerable personal risk, and the teenagers obsessively record songs onto audio cassettes from Western radio stations. As Franzen nicely puts it, “they may be continually deprived, but the texture of their daily lives is paradoxically one of fullness. In their scavenging and resourceful way, they experience the West more vividly, and appreciate it more deeply, than Westerners themselves do.” Young Micha Kuppisch lives on the nubbin of a street, the Sonnenallee, whose long end extends beyond the Berlin Wall outside his apartment building. Like his friends and family, who have their own quixotic dreams―to secure an original English pressing of Exile on Main St. , to travel to Mongolia, to escape from East Germany by buying up cheap farmland and seceding from the country―Micha is desperate for one thing. It’s not what his mother wants for him, which is to be an exemplary young Socialist and study in Moscow. What Micha wants is a love letter that may or may not have been meant for him, and may or may not have been written by the most beautiful girl on the Sonnenallee. Stolen by a gust of wind before he could open it, the letter now lies on the fortified “death strip” at the base of the Wall, as tantalizingly close as the freedoms of the West and seemingly no more attainable. Centered around young Micha Kupisch and his family and friends, the novel relates a variety of episodes exposing the bizarre and grotesque everyday lives of those living in the German Democratic Republic. This novel . . . performs what the author calls ' the miracle of making peace with the past' . . . Jonathan Franzen and Jenny Watson offer a stylish and elegant Sonnenallee." —Maren Meinhardt, The Times Literary Supplement

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Young Micha Kuppisch lives on the nubbin of a street, the Sonnenallee, whose long end extends beyond the Berlin Wall outside his apartment building. Like his friends and family, who have their own quixotic dreams―to secure an original English pressing of Exile on Main St., to travel to Mongolia, to escape from East Germany by buying up cheap farmland and seceding from the country―Micha is desperate for one thing. It’s not what his mother wants for him, which is to be an exemplary young Socialist and study in Moscow. What Micha wants is a love letter that may or may not have been meant for him, and may or may not have been written by the most beautiful girl on the Sonnenallee. Stolen by a gust of wind before he could open it, the letter now lies on the fortified “death strip” at the base of the Wall, as tantalizingly close as the freedoms of the West and seemingly no more attainable. The story is centered on the main character fifteen-year-old Michael "Micha" Kuppisch who lives with his parents and siblings, Sabine and Bernd, in a typical East Berlin flat. The story gives a nostalgic yet ironic outlook of living in the shorter end of Sonnenallee, a street which was divided during the creation of the German Democratic Republic, next to the Berlin Wall where the house numbering is comically told to start at number 379. Much of the story is based around Micha's love for the girl Miriam, another Sonnenallee resident, and the day-to-day lives of Micha and his friends. Das neue Buch von Thomas Brussig ist sein drittes und leichtestes. (...) Brussig, der das Schützenfest beschreibt, bleibt unversöhnt.Mit der Diktatur, und im Grunde auch mit der Kindheit." - Mechthild Küpper, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

Cine doreste cu adevarat sa pastreze tot ce s-a intamplat nu trebuie sa se lase in voia amintirilor. Amintirile oamenilor sunt un fenomen mult prea placut pentru a reusi doar sa pastreze lucrurile asa cum s-au petrecut; sunt exact opusul a ceea ce se doresc a fi. Pentru ca amintirile sunt in stare de mai mult, de mult mai mult: cu perseverenta lor infaptuiesc minunea de a te determina sa faci pace cu trecutul, o pace din care dispare orice urma de manie si in care valul moale al nostalgiei se asterne peste tot ceea ce odata a fost perceput ca ascutit si taios. Thomas Brussig is a German writer best known for his satirical novels that deal with German Democratic Republic. Brussig's first novel, Wasserfarben ("Watercolors") was published in 1991 under the pseudonym "Cordt Berneburger." In 1995, he published his breakthrough novel, Helden wie wir(Heroes Like Us , FSG 1997), which dealt with the fall of the Berlin Wall. The book was a critical and commercial success and was later turned into a movie. Two movies of his books have been released, "Helden wie wir" and "Sonnenallee ". This book, for some reason never previously translated into English, has found an influential champion in the American novelist Jonathan Franzen. Franzen’s collaboration with Jenny Watson, an academic scholar of German, has produced an airy, cheerful translation that delivers on everything Franzen’s introduction promises. Brussig’s Berlin, Franzen writes, is “neither a dystopia nor a utopia”. It is, simply, one more place for human beings to be human – and more specifically, for teenagers to be teenagers. It plays the sorry situation of its teenagers – living so close to the Wall that they can hear the voices of western gawkers even while aware they may never get to visit them – as gentle comedy. Thomas Brussig’s classic German satire, translated into English for the first time and introduced by Jonathan Franzen, is a comedic, moving account of life in East Berlin before the Fall of the Berlin Wall The Short End of the Sonnenallee, finally available to an American audience in a pitch-perfect translation by Jonathan Franzen and Jenny Watson, confounds the stereotypes of life in totalitarian East Germany. Brussig’s novel is a funny, charming tale of adolescents being adolescents, a portrait of a surprisingly warm community enduring in the shadow of the Iron Curtain. As Franzen writes in his foreword, the book is “a reminder that, even when the public realm becomes a nightmare, people can still privately manage to preserve their humanity, and be silly, and forgive.”

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Our main character, Micha Kuppisch, is a fifteen-year-old teenager living with his family in a typical East Berlin household. He has a sister who frequently changes boyfriends and a brother aspiring to be in the military. Other than that, he has an uncle called Heinz living in West Berlin who frequently “smuggles” goods for his family, despite the fact that most of the stuff he smuggles is actually legal to be brought to East Berlin. Also central to Micha’s life is his yearning for the affection of Miriam, the girl who is described as the most beautiful girl in the Sonnenallee and who often makes out with a guy from West Berlin on many public occasions. Rather than painting grim images of East Berlin under the GDR regime, Thomas Brussig tries to bring closer images of typical East German people’s lives. He points out that characters still listen to Western music such as the Rolling Stones or read and discuss Sartre’s works to the point of becoming an existentialist in the story. A charming comedy of mid-80s East Germany; funny and tender, [this book] damns totalitarianism through its warm focus on ordinary, riotous teenage life." — The Guardian Am kürzeren Ende der Sonnenallee (On the Shorter End of Sun Avenue) is the third novel by author Thomas Brussig. The novel is set in East Berlin in the real-life street of Sonnenallee sometime in the late 1970s or early 1980s. The film Sonnenallee, also written by Brussig, is based on the same characters but depicts a significantly different storyline. [1] Unusual is the fact that the screenplay for Sonnenallee served as the basis for the novel, rather than the other way around. Mr Brussig's unseriousness is programmatic. (...) Nothing very bad happens. It is rather like a Billy Bunter book, japes and scrapes of the boys of the Remove. Not so bad; after all we had lots of fun. Is that how the GDR looks, ten years after its demise ?" - The Economist This is an entirely charming tale of “rich memories” and “making peace with the past”." - John Self, The Guardian

The involvement of Franzen gives this entertaining translation of Brussig’s charming East German novel plenty of star quality. But you can see why the American was so keen to bring this superb slice of life behind the Berlin Wall to a wider audience. Written in 1999, each chapter from the point of view of teenager Michael, it is a pitch-perfect takedown of the totalitarian experience. A reminder that no matter the harshness of a situation, a community can still live with hope and humour. Oxblood Tatsächlich aber ist der schmale Episodenroman Am kürzeren Ende der Sonnenallee, der etwa Mitte der achtziger Jahre unter Ostberliner Heranwachsenden spielt und bis in die umstandslose Syntax hinein ihre Gefühls- und Erfahrungswelt evoziert, reinste, heiterste, zärtlichste Poesie des Widerstands. Und zwar des richtigen Widerstands, von dessen Risiken seinerzeit selbst die armen Prol-Kinder und multikulturellen Underdogs vom längeren Ende der Sonnenallee nicht den mindesten Begriff gehabt haben dürften. (...) So stereotyp seine Figuren auch sind, so schimmernd und vielsagend sind ihre Gesten." - Andreas Nentwich, Die Zeit Event organized by: Michael Koch, Sebastian Luft, John Pustejovski, and Jenny Watson in conjunction with the Center for the Advancement of the Humanities (CFAH). Thomas Brussig’s classic German novel, The Short End of the Sonnenallee, now appearing for the first time in English, is a moving and miraculously comic story of life in East Berlin before the fall of the Wall

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Brussig hat seine Geschichte mit frechem Witz geschrieben, ohne seine Figuren zu denunzieren." - Birgit Warnhold, Berliner Morgenpost One of the most brilliant satirical novels about life in East Berlin, in the shadow of the wall (quite literally)”. —Daniel Kehlmann, The New York Times Book Review

Dr. Sebastian Luft, professor of Philosophy at Marquette University, specializes in 19th & 20th Century European Philosophy esp. Kant, German Idealism, Neo-Kantianism, the Phenomenological Movement as well as Hermeneutics, Philosophy of Culture (including Theory of the Human and Cultural Sciences), Epistemology, and the Philosophy of History. Micha's Uncle Heinz, who generously regularly comes to visit his poor sister and her family in the East, smuggles in candy for the kids and worries about the asbestos in the family's tiny apartment giving them all lung cancer. Laugh-out-loud funny and unabashedly silly, Brussig's novel follows the bizarre, grotesque quotidian details of life in the German Democratic Republic. As this new translation shows, the ideas at its heart – freedom, democracy and life’s fundamental hilarity – hold great relevance for today.Thomas Brussig’s classic German novel, The Short End of the Sonnenallee , now appearing for the first time in English, is a moving and miraculously comic story of life in East Berlin before the fall of the Wall Young Micha Kuppisch lives on the nubbin of a street, the Sonnenallee, whose long end extends beyond the Berlin Wall outside his apartment building. Like his friends and family, who have their own quixotic dreams—to secure an original English pressing of Exile on Main St., to travel to Mongolia, to escape from East Germany by buying up cheap farmland and seceding from the country—Micha is desperate for one thing. It’s not what his mother wants for him, which is to be an exemplary young Socialist and study in Moscow. What Micha wants is a love letter that may or may not have been meant for him, and may or may not have been written by the most beautiful girl on the Sonnenallee. Stolen by a gust of wind before he could open it, the letter now lies on the fortified “death strip” at the base of the Wall, as tantalizingly close as the freedoms of the West and seemingly no more attainable. A delicious slice of life in 1980s East Berlin . . . Comedy, which comes through perfectly in the sharp translation, is essential to Brussig’s project as he subverts the dread and paranoia of East German life by portraying a small world with love, tenderness, and humor hidden within it. There’s a lot to love in this flipping of the Cold War script." — Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) Theirs is a world in which a misdemeanour at school will result in the students having to deliver self-abasing lectures on their ideological crimes, with titles such as “What Quotations from the Classical Authors of Marxism-Leninism Have to Say to Us Today”. One cheeky boy, invited by his school sports coaches to train for Olympic cycling, replies, “Training’s not my thing. Pole-vaulting’s as far as I’ll go.” But why pole-vaulting of all things? “Because it means practicing clearing three meters forty-five,” he replies, to bemused coaches who don’t seem aware of the significance of that number: the height of the Wall. The Short End of the Sonnenallee, is a satire set, literally, on the Sonnenallee, the famed "boulevard of the sun" in East Berlin.