Incentives - Neue Literatur aus Österreich

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[ Buchtipp von Incentives ] At the very beginning the end is clear. Richard Sorge knows where his last steps will take him: to the gallows. After three years of imprisonment, it is the year 1944, he is en route to his execution. This is where Martin Kobaczek’s novel begins. Thus demonstrating that everything we associate with the name Sorge – adventure and romantic spy stories – is of only indirect interest. The coupling of the name Richard Sorge (1895-1944) with “dream” in the subtitle already indicates the direction that interests Kubaczek more than a correct description of the events surrounding the communist double agent. Sorge worked for the Red Army’s intelligence service beginning in 1929 and was sent to Tokyo in 1933 in order to build a network of Soviet agents. There, as correspondent at a German daily newspaper – a position which provided excellent cover for his mission – he made contact with the German community, became a member of the Nazi party and a close counselor of the German ambassador and influential business circles. In May 1941, Sorge was able to inform Moscow of the date of Hitler’s surprise attack on the Soviet Union. But Stalin did not take his reports seriously.

Martin Kubaczek, who himself lived in Japan for 15 years, is interested in Sorge’s function as a mirror of Japanese society shortly before and after the start of World War II. He draws an exhaustive portrait of Nippon, its customs and people, as well as the onset of first changes. In these descriptions, Sorge appears as a man of many faces: bon vivant, lover of many women, calm reporter. Someone who is always facing riddles, not least that of his own psyche and the inadequacy of his own feelings. He is portrayed as a torn man who collects information that is not believed. This psychological profile of a stranger in a strange land is revealed in flood-lit scenes.

Indulgently, Kubaczek portrays not only the Japanese landscape but also a surprising abundance of minutiae and injects his prose with a persuasive power that never boasts falsely, exudes luminosity and floats energetically.

Review by Alexander Kluy, September 2009. English translation by Laura Radosh.
Complete version: http://www.literaturhaus.at/index.php?id=7400

[ Info ] Kubaczek, Martin: Sorge. Ein Traum. (original language: Deutsch) Folio Verlag, Wien, Bozen, 2009 . ISBN: 978-3-85256-497-5.