by Wladimir Kaminer
Funny indeed! Kaminer was born in Moscow and has been living in Berlin since 1990. He writes in German, but he is not someone who pretends to be a German. That makes his books so fanny, he has just a different view at our everyday “stupidities”. I suspect that is natural, since for somebody, who was brought up with those customs, convictions or beloved rituals, it is not obvious how strange it looks to an outsider. What works well is that he never expresses disgust. It is rather a surprising observation jointly with an ironic or satyric comment.
The topic of the book is a phenomena called “Schrebergarten”. A “Schrebergarten is a little garden with a bungalow (or hut) on it. It serves as weekend escape for city-siders. The funniest thing is that those gardens are very often locates within the city itself or even worse along a noisy inner city railroad. The “Schrebergarten” is actually the ultimate expression for an average petty bourgeois. In a self-experiment the author encounters a micro-world of all sorts of citizens.
It is not “high literature” – but very, very entertaining. At least for a German.
The topic of the book is a phenomena called “Schrebergarten”. A “Schrebergarten is a little garden with a bungalow (or hut) on it. It serves as weekend escape for city-siders. The funniest thing is that those gardens are very often locates within the city itself or even worse along a noisy inner city railroad. The “Schrebergarten” is actually the ultimate expression for an average petty bourgeois. In a self-experiment the author encounters a micro-world of all sorts of citizens.
It is not “high literature” – but very, very entertaining. At least for a German.
Facts:
English title: n/a
Original title: Mein Leben im Schrebergarten
Published: 2007
