[ book tip by Incentives ] Woher wir kommen (Where We Come From), the title of Barbara Frischmuth’s new novel, is the leitmotiv and question with which the novel’s central female characters are preoccupied. Three chapters outline the biographies of three women – which intersect, interrupt, and mirror one another. The narrative always takes place in the present, but this present can only be understood after delving, chapter by chapter, into the family and political histories that connect the three biographies. The three women on whom the novel focuses – Ada, an artist, with whom the novel begins at the present time, Martha, Ada’s mother, and Lilofee, Martha’s aunt – are all connected by the experience of having lost someone. Ada’s partner in life and art committed suicide; Martha’s husband and his Kurdish friend disappeared without a trace in the Ararat mountains twenty years ago; and Lilofee’s lover, a Ukrainian prisoner of war denounced in 1944 by Lilofee’s own father and subsequently murdered in a concentration camp.

The novel covers a span of 75 years, with the women’s feelings and ideas taking center stage. While Ada and Martha speak for themselves, Lilofee’s life is told from the perspective of a stranger – the author assembles dialogues between anonymous voices that reflect the rigid morality and racism of the countryside. It is in this (in)direct way that the reader also learns historical facts, for example the inadequate investigation and prosecution of Nazi crimes in the area. As in Frischmuth’s earlier books, the Orient plays a central role; her sober yet poetic descriptions of Istanbul are remarkable and serve to integrate political developments in Turkey into the plot.

One central theme is motherhood or childlessness, which the author links to political contexts. But the main themes are still remembering and retelling. For example, in one conversation one character expresses her fear “that in the end we all disappear into the crevice of time,” to which the other replies: “You forget that our memories also travel on, that is the point of telling stories.”

Abridged version of the review by Elena Messner, April 2013. English translation by Laura Radosh
Full German text: http://www.literaturhaus.at/index.php?id=9855&L

[ book info ] Frischmuth, Barbara: Woher wir kommen. (original language: Deutsch) Aufbau Verlag, Berlin, 2012 . ISBN: 978-3-351-03508-2.