Reading German Books in 2020 discussion

Tess Lewis’s translation was shortlisted for the 2021 Helen and Kurt Wolff Translation Prize. Of course, you may read it in the original , if you wish! 😉

my library has it, so I'll be reading in German too

Thanks to my pile of Edinburgh Book Festival reading, I’ll not get to it until September, but it’s good to know Ihave something to look forward to.

just started reading "Kraft" in german, i'm two chapters in, starts slow but really love the lenghty sentences. not much story so far, looking forward to see how it evolves

I just started it (in German), and so far I really don‘t care for these ridiculously long sentences. I might just need a larger chunk of time to get into it.

I also started it in German and struggled with the long sentences! I forgot to bring it on holiday, so I'll have to start again!

I started it (in English) 5 mins ago. Am already chuckling.

P2 “I’ll find a European tone … A tone that will combine Leibniz’s optimism and Kant’s rigor with Voltaire’s derisive scorn and Rabelais’s irrepressible laughter and will unite them with Hölderlinian spheres with Zola’s sensitivity to human suffering with Mann’s irony … no, better leave Mann out of it, that half Californian.”

What a sentence!

i'm done, really enjoyed it, although at some points it was tiresome and i was slightly overwhelmed by the content and structures. 4*

Finished it now. A little patchy for me. Nothing to do with the long sentences, which I found I could handle surprisingly well (Tess Lewis has done a grand job with her English translation), more to do with the content of those sentences in parts. Ironically, as Lüscher is a philosopher writing an ironic novel, it was the philosophical parts that had my eyes glazing over …

I did appreciate the irony in Kraft being kraftlos/powerless in all areas of life apart from his intellect, and yet the challenge of writing an optimistic essay about the goodness of the universe proved too much for him. No wonder really given his failed relationships ….

No,spoilers here - was anyone surprised by the ending? yes/no answers suffice.

I did get used to the long sentences and did quite enjoy them. I also liked the story, though, like some of you said, certain parts of the philosophical discourses were a little hard to follow.
I don‘t know what to make of the end, maybe it was just the logical end. I didn‘t like it but couldn‘t tell you how I would have wanted it to end.

I have to say though the scene where Kraft lost the boat and his pants, and had to crawl through the mud back to civilization, was hilarious.