Of life and death

German writer Christopher Kloeble on the theme behind his third book Meistens Alles Sehr Schnell, a story of self discovery set in the Bavarian Alps

February 03, 2014 06:52 pm | Updated May 18, 2016 05:40 am IST - chennai

A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE: Christopher Kloeble Photo: K.V. Srinivasan

A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE: Christopher Kloeble Photo: K.V. Srinivasan

A lmost Everything Very Fast is the title that young German writer Christopher Kloeble would have preferred for his third book, Meistens Alles Sehr Schnell , whose English translation will be out in early 2015. Instead, the actual title More Often Than Not All Very Fast is much wordier. Christopher acknowledges that irony doesn’t work as well in German as in English because German is a weightier language. In his latest novel, Christopher points out that the translator tried to approximate the solemnity and gravitas of the original German, and hence the mouthful of a title!

Set in the Bavarian Alps, in the village of Konigsdorf, the novel is about 19-year-old Albert who finds out his father, whom he calls Fred, just has five months left to live. Fred is a bit simple- minded or as the novel puts it, “soft in the head”. Basically he is a child trapped in the body of a 60-year old man. Now, Albert just has five months to find out who his mother is and the duo set out on an adventurous voyage of discovery.

Christopher, a 31-year-old screenwriter, novelist and playwright, has studied creative writing, film and television. He has been a writer-in-residence at several universities in U.S., Germany and at the Goethe Institute in India. Having scripted plays as well as movie scripts, Christopher now divides his time between Berlin and New Delhi where his wife is from. At an event organised by the Goethe Institute-Max Mueller Bhavan, Christopher read excerpts from his book. He was joined by Sahitya Akademi winner and poet-translator Indran.

The discussion kicked off with Indran asking if Christopher’s novels represented the language and zeitgeist of the German youth. Christopher said “I just write about what I find interesting as I have to be my own first reader. I don’t dare say what the voice of the young generation is.” Figuring out what’s next for his characters guides him in his writing and writing is his catharsis. Writing is also a form of escape for Christopher, because in his novels, he says, he can kill someone off or father fifty children, climb the Himalayas or swim with crocodiles — basically do the things he couldn’t possibly do in real life.

While Indran pointed out that in his novels, the plot revolves around the theme of family, Christopher said it would be hard to set a novel without a familial theme because “the first few years that you spend in life are with your family and it defines you forever.” As the blurb for one of his earlier novels, A Knock At The Door , puts it, Christopher is interested in the “quotidian lives of his protagonists, rather than punch lines or seismic dramas, and love as well as death, and life’s everyday tears are as important as its major fissures.” So even dying is treated as an adventure, like the father’s character Fred says, “Everyone always says dying’s awful…I think it’s great, like a big surprise. I’m looking forward to it. You know what I’d like, Albert? I’d like to die with you except that’ll be quite hard. I’m getting there much faster.”

The novel focuses on the final months of Fred’s life and Indran noted that even young care-takers of the old can start feeling old themselves. However, it’s not like the novel is rooted in personal experience. Instead, Christopher simply imagined what it would be like for his characters, but he did point out that in the first 10 to 15 years, he thought his parents “were like Google, because they knew the answer to everything. Then you realise they don’t know a lot and that frightens you. Then parents start asking you more questions and you switch roles.”

While his character Albert wonders why people have to travel away from home to discover themselves, Christopher is living proof that distance offers perspective. As he puts it, “you learn more about a place when you leave it.” So living in New Delhi half the year helps him become more aware of German stories and their context. As for portraying more of India in his work, he says usually in Germany, Indians are reduced to their stereotypes that swing between elephants, spices and maharajahs on one hand and slums and poverty on the other. Christophe hopes to redress the balance soon in an upcoming script that features an Indian origin character.

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