![]() ![]() He marries (happily), is made Professor at the Humboldt University and lives through the fall of the Berlin Wall and German Unification in a rather detached way. Through fate and geography, he becomes East German. Richard was born – and nearly lost – in ‘the mayhem’ of second world war Germany. The other protagonist in Jenny Erpeneck’s novel – in addition to Awad, Rashid and Osarabo and the others – is a retired, widowed and lonely Classics Professor, Richard, who lives in Berlin and becomes interested in the refugees’ plight, initially out of intellectual curiosity and then out of genuine compassion. Three men from Africa of the many thousands who flee their countries, endure loss of family, friends, jobs, violence, danger, boat trips across the Mediterranean who survive against all odds and arrive in Germany, in Europe – to confront what? Hostility, unfamiliar customs and bureaucracy but also, occasionally, great human kindness. Three names, three individuals, three protagonists in German author Jenny Erpenbeck’s new novel. ![]()
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