So the best German novel of the last year – either the last 12 months, or of 2012 entire – is “Eskimo Limon 9” by Sarah Diehl. And it’s a wild beast of a novel too. A beautiful sprawl, about many things at once – and yet it all fits. It’s fearless, yet not irresponsible. Many people mix those two up.
Anyway, the novel: It’s about an Israeli family moving to Germany – not to a big city, but the small town Niederbrechen in Hessen. Chen is hired to work as a computer scientist in nearby Frankfurt, 11-year old Eran is trying to find his way at school and Ziggy is mostly bored. So she’s exploring her surroundings to find traces of the past, and also buries herself in Israeli pop culture, old Eurovision broadcasts and movies.
She also befriends Koffel, the self-styled pariah of Niederbrechen. Koffel – an old leftie – has this fixed idea of the “other Germany” – not in the Stauffenberg sense, thank G’d, but rather Fassbinder, Böll, Herzog. (Very BRD now that I think about it.) When Ziggy visits him she notices that he has every book on Jews filed in the WWII section of his library.
“Why did all of this make him so sad? Because it was about Jews” one of the other German characters thinks at one point. It just nails a certain German attitude – in a way that is clear-eyed, brutal even, but somehow not cruel or condescending. As you can see I find myself using this construction a lot when talking about this novel: “it is x without being y”. Because just pretending this isn’t murky water won’t make it so.
I’ve suffered through my fair share of German books and films about “the Jew thing” (mostly code for “the Holocaust thing” of course). I don’t want to silence anybody but I really don’t need another story about how you met a Jew and it was awkward, or how you heard a survivor talk about his life and were really moved. Of course you were moved. I also don’t need another bad joke, another Tabubruch. Because pretending you’re a funny Nazi doesn’t make you dangerous, it makes you an asshole. To quote Richard Pryor: I don’t like it.
Now I want to delete that paragraph – not because I’m afraid of offending anybody but it just feels sort of pathetic. Another angry Jew and all that. But there is legitimate pain and frustration, and for good reason. I can see it all around me. I’ve heard the word “alija” quite a number of times – and it’s always very funny and very serious. I’m staying here though. To quote an old Jew: This is the business we’ve chosen.
And “Eskimo Limon 9” is one of the things that makes it bearable – because it forces me to look closely. Not sand and dust, but the splinter in my eye that’s the best magnifying glass. This novel awoke me from my “Ech, Germany, what a boring and horrible country” stupor, which was just a cover-up for “Woe is me, a Jew who has to live here” anyway. Those are still two valid attitudes, but just not that interesting (and healthy) in the long run. It’s (almost) always better to be engaged with something, even and especially if you end up dismissing it.
So yes, this is the Big Book on Israelis, Jews, Germany and the Shoah that people thought couldn’t be written. But here it is. There aren’t any plans to translate it into English, sadly, but you should read it if you can. Jews in the countryside, Israelis in Berlin, strangers in Germany: it’s all in there.
And as for Sarah: she has a mole. Not on her face, but on her shelf, in formaldehyde. She found it dead while walking through the woods – in the middle of the path, just lying on its back dead, like it just had a stroke. “Just like we bury our dead maybe moles put theirs overground”, she muses. Maybe the formaldehyde is her work, or writing in general? I must ask her. She also chose the title for this text. Why I don’t know. All these wonderful questions.