Anniversaries by Uwe Johnson review – witness to worlds in turmoil

A monumental work draws striking parallels between 30s Germany and a race-torn 60s United States

Born under the Third Reich, Uwe Johnson began this dense, bustling and surprisingly playful magnum opus in 1966, having left East Germany with his family for the United States; it wasn’t completed until 1983, a year before his death, by which time his marriage had broken down and he was living alone in the island town of Sheerness, in Kent.

Juxtaposing the tumult of 60s America with everyday life in Nazi Germany, Anniversaries chronicles 20th-century turmoil through the eyes of Gesine Cresspahl, who leaves postwar Mönchengladbach to raise her young daughter, Marie, on New York’s Upper West Side. In the original German, the book appeared in four parts over 13 years; an abridged English text came out in 1987, but only now can anglophone readers taste it uncut, in Damion Searls’ two-volume translation.

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from Books | The Guardian http://bit.ly/2RpEKXd

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