"For while Erpenbeck adopted some of the features of the form apparently throwaway observations on daily life, such as minor irritation at the difficulty of sourcing proper splitterbrotchen, an unpretentious pastry now pimped for a more elaborate and wealthy clientele she consistently enlarged and complicated it. Into that recognisable tone of ennui and mild querulousness with which journalists hope to woo a time-pressed but disenchanted or nostalgic readership, Erpenbeck smuggled metaphysics, politics and history."
"As in her fiction, her attention is drawn to the irrefutable power of contingency. As a child and adolescent, she was an East German; entering adulthood, she finds that her country no longer exists and that personal, family, social and political histories have been compressed into the suddenly appearing moment. If the collapse of the Berlin Wall was an easily grasped symbol, dramatic in its intensity and immediacy,"
These columns originated in a German newspaper and later appeared in English translation. Everyday observations and minor irritations serve as entry points for wider philosophical, political and historical reflection. Domestic details such as pastries and routines become lenses for examining contingency, memory and change. Memories of life in East Germany and the sudden disappearance of a familiar state highlight compressed personal and collective histories. Questions probe the status of objects after disappearance, persons after death, renamed states and altered identities. The prose balances a tone of ennui and mild querulousness with metaphysical inquiry and attentive description.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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