German Lit and Henning Mankell An Event in Autumn

I finished Christine Nöstlinger's children's book Fly Away Home days ago, and then I immediately started in on my second German Literature Month read, Rolf Rathmann's, Young Light, a YA novel set during the 1960s. The only problem with the Rathmann novel is that I wish I knew in which part of Germany the novel is set. Because several characters have access to music by the Beatles, I would assume that I can narrow the setting down to West Germany.

I truly enjoyed Fly Away Home and the uproariously topsy-turvy world of Vienna and environs at war's end and immediately post-war. Although many in Germany and in other parts of the former  Reich experienced extreme brutality by the invading Russians, it seems that Nöstlinger and her family were spared that. Although the Russians in their midst appeared grossly foreign to Nöstlinger and her parents, the Russians were, for all that, harmless and worked to coexist harmoniously with the vanquished Austrians.

In fact, the author, a child of eight, and her family became very fond of some of the Russians occupying their adopted abode and immediate neighborhood. The author's father, a German army deserter by the final weeks of the war, drank with the Russians each evening into the night. Christine, the author, developed a powerful bond with the Russian cook from Leningrad, a gentle, kindly man, and the two swapped whoppers day by day, by the hour. The book is full of stories that detail the harsh privations the Austrians experienced, but it is equally full of the spirit and gumption of the survivors to overcome anything that threatened their existence. An excellent book, really, and not one I'll soon forget.

Henning Mankell's An Event in Autumn is (or was) a story (some might deem it a novella) written for and published for a Dutch audience as a sort of bonus for other book purchases. In the Kurt Wallendar canon, the story takes place immediately before the final Wallendar novel, The Troubled Man, which I realize I now must read. An Event in Autumn is a spare, simple novel of what happens when Wallendar visits Martinson's family's cottage in the country with the intent to perhaps purchase it. Wallendar naturally finds skeletal remains in the garden, and off it goes. I thoroughly enjoyed it, but I must warn readers that it is nowhere near as complex as other Wallendar novels, though it is an enjoyable novella nonetheless. I actually found I appreciated the lack of complexity! That's my mind these days. It's a quick, quick read, so do pick it up if you have the inclination.