The story of a Russian-Jewish family from Hamburg is told in Maxim Biller’s new novel that spans from World War II Odessa through the late Stalinist period to the present, recounting dramatic events with poetic power: the massacre of Odessa Jews in 1941, a KGB poison attack aimed at the narrator’s father that hits his wife, and the father’s Zionist dreams that eventually strand him in Hamburg’s Grindelviertel. »In book after book, Maxim Biller reminds Europe that complaining is the essence of freedom. His wry and sardonic estrangement is a literary treasure that makes life better« (Joshua Cohen).
Hosted by Jörg Thadeusz.
