D er Deutsche Sommer , or “The German Summer”, is a sophomore novel by 22-year-old Arnab Chakraborty. Young Arnab is awarded the opportunity to spend a summer in Germany interning at a research lab in a University. This trip is his first out of India, and thus promises unique observations of life overseas. Doubling up as a travelogue and introduction to local history, the book is pregnant with possibilities.
Fails to deliver
The first and most glaring issue was the poor command of language. The erratic spelling, careless grammar, convoluted sentences and inappropriate choice of words made reading exceptionally tiring. The English was so bad that I often had to take breaks from reading because it gave me headaches. Despite being a slim book of ten thin chapters, it took an arduous week to finish because anything more than a chapter at a sitting was impossibly draining. It was all I could do to stop myself from whipping out a pen to correct the mistakes. Unfortunately, I did not own the book so that option was ruled out. Instead, I was left to take deep breaths and stare at the ceiling in existential despair every five minutes.
The second issue that popped up was the author's clumsy handling of his fascination with Adolf Hitler. As he leaves Delhi airport, he announces that he is leaving “Gandhiji's India” for “Hitler's Germany”. Such parallels are inappropriate at best and offensive at worst.
That the author displays surprise at learning that many German youth do not share Hitler's ideals is truly disturbing. It makes me wonder how many other Indian youths are this ill-informed.
The author also inappropriately refers to Hitler as “Sir Adolf”, hopefully an unintentional gaffe and not an indication that he mistakenly believes Hitler to have been knighted.
The political incorrectness was not limited just to Hitler and the author also made several sweeping racial stereotypes. For example, he cited the German “hatred” for the British, among others. He also included many distasteful descriptions of women, which may have been intended as tongue-in-cheek, but came across as patronising and inappropriate, and quite frankly made him out to seem repressed.
The third element that made the book a tedious read was the indiscriminate listing of facts. The author's favourite activity in a new place was to read everything he could get his hands on. Whilst having a curious mind is a positive trait, the unedited inclusion of all and sundry doesn't make for coherent reading. Random facts like how long the Delhi airport runway is, overstay their welcome and the reader's attention starts to wander.
As a history text, it reads too thin. It blitzes through too much history too quickly and raises more questions than it answers. That said, it piqued my interest to read up on European history in order to fill in the blanks. Some prose made me want to see the various places for myself, which was no doubt one of the aims of this book. On that account the author succeeded. He obviously enjoys researching and this is reflected in the detail found in the book. Those of us who have had similar experiences travelling abroad will appreciate the difficulty in accurately sharing the multitude of experiences, in all their wondrous entirety, to those back home.
In addition, rather than just talking about writing down his experiences, the author actually did it, and for that he does deserve credit.
It is thus a shame that the book's potential is not realised, and that it reads more like an early draft rather than a final product.
Edwina is a Bachelor in Social Science (Political Science, Sociology) from the Singapore Management University.
Title: Der Deutsche Sommer
Writer: Arnab Chakraborty
Publisher: Wordizen Books
Price: Rs. 150
