Next World Novella

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Igoni Barrett 1 A. Robert Cargill 1 C. Scott Fitzgerald 3 F. Jefferson Farjeon 1 J. Frank Baum 1 L. John Harrison 1 M. Love this view from the entrance of work on these clear winters nights. It can be depressing leaving in the dark. Not the case liverpoolcentrallibrary. Brutally Honest by officialmelb is a eye opening, frank and troubling account of how she ended up in a coercive and abusive marriage, the time leading up to it and the time after it.

I also thought the northern grit, northern humour and sense of hope shone through even in the darkest moments. Could be triggering but will also be incredibly helpful to a lot of people who are or have been in similar situations. Jess Kidd has become one of my favourite fiction discoveries this year. I loved The Hoarder and I loved Himself too. Mahoney returns to Mulderrig to find out what happened to his mother who vanished not long after his birth. He knows there will be secrets, but with the help of his friends living and dead, he has no idea how deep they go.

Next World Novella

This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use. To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: All in all I can only recommend this book. This one sounds really, really good. Will check it out, thanks. I would be very curious to see what you think of it, especially the ending. The intepretation and reintepretation of his life is extremely interesting. When I was a child it was my favourite painting. We got one of the originals at the art museum here in Basel. He painted at least two and one is in Germany.

Book review – Next World Novella by Matthias Politycki

I will have to look out for it now. And that painting is extraordinary — just overpoweringly evocative. I stood in front of that painting very often. It is quite hypnotic. But I am sort of glad this is not the way I picture the after life. I would so like to discuss the ending! I want to read all the Pereine novellas. Every time a new one comes out I think I really must buy them and catch up, as everyone seems to love them. I am SO envious that you have several languages.

I am stuck with English only, but I have a bit of a thing about how a narrative is transposed from one language to another. I never know what has been lost in translation, but I suspect that, usually, it is quite a lot. I think she chooses her books well and carefully. They are all worth reading but I think I liked the Delius best so far. I am glad I can switch languages although many translators do a great job.

But there has to be a case by case choice. In any case it is quite a fascinating topic. But there is something for everybody in this novella.

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You have Doro with her convictions and Hinrich who is completely different. Hinrich Schepp does not mean anything but it is full of assonance. Hirn, Depp, … It does sound funny and makes you think of all sorts of words that are derogatory. I like the idea of interwoven texts in a novel that deals with life and the afterlife in the way you describe. Interesting possibilities for such blurring of boundaries. Have yet to read any of the Peirene Press titles in translation, but I did read the Barbal title in Catalan several years ago and remember enjoying it—good luck finding a copy for yourself.

I think the Pereine Program is interesting. I could find it in Spanish but then I could as well read it in French. I might end up reading it in German or English. Jenseitsnovelle is an amazing text. I was already well and truly bored of these ten years ago, with Zadie Smith's On Beauty. Though there is the odd exception, preferably with humour, e. At least, being in Germany, he can't live in Hampstead, or a similar part of New York, as his type usually does. And there are still some unusual and rather beautiful paragraphs, about his wife Doro's fears and visualisations about the afterlife, related to a painting in a Berlin gallery, and her own academic research on the I Ching.

Both are Sinologists; I'm not sure if the term has unfavourable connotations now, but if it did, it would fit the old-fashioned atmosphere of the couple, their studies and relationship; they are 56 and 65 and the book was published in , yet I kept having to remind myself it wasn't twenty or thirty years older than that - only a few details of modernity ever did.

There are a couple of twists, which were quite predictable ways to vary a plot featuring this type of character. Then there is a character whom I suspect of being a lazy stereotype in modern Germany: It was in a way satisfying to see the predicted twists develop. I enjoyed the novel-within-a-novel more than parts of the main story. Some of the writing during Hinrich's and Doro's early relationship was lovely, and also that near the end.

Interesting details about drinking culture in Germany: I liked Doro's voice when she wrote at length. The writing was often better than the plot and than some of the cliched meanings behind the lines - but you'd hope so from Anthea Bell, one of the most widely respected German translators. Next World Novella wasn't all bad, at least.

On entering his study, Hinrich Schepp notices immediately " As he lets his eyes wander across the room to drink in the play of light and shadow from the autumn sunlight, he notices his wife sitting, as she often does, in his chair at his desk, editing whatever he wrote the night before. He is indeed a "happy man". But then, he had not written anything for years Like for a stage set Politicky describes the room with great visual impact. The reader looks over Schepp's shoulder and takes in the scenario and follows the husband's movements and musings.

Expressing his feelings for his wife - I have always loved her - alternate with his reaction to the discovery of the manuscript she is "editing". The more he reads the more he finds her comments surprising, incomprehensible, and some are even offensive. Why write a biting critique on a manuscript he discarded years ago?

What does she want to tell him? Doro has not moved at all: Politycki's novella delves profoundly into the questions of truth, pretend truth, smaller and larger lies and secrets, the alternate realities in the long-lasting marriage between two people who appear - or appear to Schepp - to have lived in a harmonious relationship. Well, yes, they don't have much to say to each other and, yes, he has been living a rather separate life since Gradually, as Schepp reengages with his manuscript and reflects on the increasingly extensive and accusatory notes from his wife, another reality comes into view.

However, Doro's comments on his text, while irritating Schepp immensely, provoke him to defend his behaviour, his mistakes, his indiscretions Two intriguing themes are worth highlighting and that are, in a way, central to the story and connected in meaning. The first is Doro's intense preoccupation with the afterlife; her fear of dying, her vision of needing to cross a huge black lake before "dying a second time".

Her husband, without any of these beliefs, had promised her even before their wedding to hold her hand when she reaches the shore of the lake. An ancient Chinese text, the "I Gin", has been studied by the couple, who are both Sinologists. One sign, "KHAN", representing water, abyss, but also fundamental change, attracts both in different and similar ways plays an increasing important role in their relationships. Without wanting to give any spoilers, or expanding into a philosophical discussion, the hints have to suffice.

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The author is praised for his sense of humour and irony and in hindsight I can fully subscribe to this interpretation. His novella has some great surprises in store that make you reflect and go back to read some passages again for clues. For me, however, while reading it in German, the ironic side of writing does only come into its own two thirds into the story. Politycki also applies a somewhat unusual writing style for his protagonist that slows the reading initially. This stylistic feature would be impossible to recreate in English; Anthea Bell's excellent translation tells the story in a very smooth, fluid and accessible language.

Jul 11, Roger Brunyate rated it really liked it. But I do know the imprints of the Peirine Press, a series of shorter European fiction that all look worth reading; their publication of Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman by Friederich Christian Delius was a special joy for me. So I was fully prepared to enjoy this one. If only it hadn't been for that smell!

As if Doro had forgotten to change the water for the flowers, as if their stems ha The Last Note I had not heard of Matthias Politycki, although he is apparently well known in Germany. As if Doro had forgotten to change the water for the flowers, as if their stems had begun to rot overnight, filling the air with the sweet-sour aroma of decay. And so Professor Hinrich Schepp, the world's leading expert on ancient Chinese script, walks over to his wife Doro, who has fallen asleep at his desk, editing one of his manuscripts.

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Walks over to plant a kiss on her neck, and finds that she is dead. It is not an academic paper that Doro is working on, but an unfinished short story of Hinrich's own, called "Marek the Drunkard," maybe intended as the tentative beginning of a novel, but long since discarded.

She has been making marginal comments, at one point changing Marek's name to Hinrich. It is clear that she does not believe that this lame-footed romance between a bar waitress and one of her pathetic customers is fiction at all. And so, after moving his wife's body to the chaise, Hinrich Schepp reads on in growing horror. As does the reader. To find that in a curious way, the two stories do indeed merge.

Oh yes, the names are different, but without any typographical distinction, it becomes difficult to remember if one is immersed in the fact or the fiction, or if the so-called fact is itself a kind of fiction. What we are sure of is that we are reading a critique of a marriage, an apparently happy marriage of three decades, but also one in which a woman of talent and distinction has submerged herself in service to a mediocre man. For Doro, at the time of her marriage, was a rising star in the Department of Sinology, and an aristocrat in her own right: Dorothee Wilhelmine Renate, Countess von Hagelstein.

Her specialty was the I Ching , particularly those elements that concern ancient Chinese beliefs about death. She is fixated on the image of death as a wide cold lake that one must swim across to reach the other side. She and Hinrich made a pact to wait for one another on the shores of that lake, so neither would have to swim it alone. The title and this vow add another dimension to what might have been a clever but relatively trivial story of domestic rancor.

We may now see it as taking place, not after or before death, but on the rim of death. And as certain features come back to repeat in the latter part of the novella, we notice subtle differences in detail that get us thinking. I don't believe the book has anything like the strength or importance of the Delius novella mentioned above, and am not sure whether its ending is profound or merely clever.

But it is certainly intriguing, sadly true in its portrait of a marriage, and written at just the right length for maximum impact. May 11, Amy rated it it was amazing. Luckily the details eluded him because he saw antying that was more than three to five metres away only in indistinct outline. Of course he noticed something was going on. And although at university he was at last considered a genius and quietly admired, he still always had to stand aside when the real prizes were handed out.

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That question becomes the theme to this story of Schepp and his wife Doro, two academics who teach Chinese history and whose marriage appears solid on the surface. Schepp serves as an anchor to Doro as she has a tremendous fear of deathshe worries obsessively about possible afterlife scenarios. That is, until Schepp has eye surgery to better his eyesight. Suddenly, everything changes…quiet and peace are no longer enough: Now it dazzled him with a confusingly large number of details… Overnight life seemed like one long missed opportunity.

If he had previously renounced a great deal, never complained, he was now determined to make up for it. As shock sets in, he is strangely unable to take the necessary actions, and instead finds himself poring over her notes. Thus the concepts of sight, vision, appearance, and imagination all combine to make this a suspenseful read, from the reality of his dealing with her corpse to the mystery behind her hidden personality.

The denouement of it, a manuscript that Schepp had kept hidden and was somehow now edited by Doro, creates confusion and another element of mystery. How separate can a writer be from his characters? Was it a novel that he wrote, or a wish list? As the terrible day of his grim discovery proceeds, a sense of anticipation builds. I found myself mentally urging him to call the coroner, to put the notes away, to get some air. Angrily he asked her why she always had to destroy everything, even in death!

In a practical sense, it made me never want to smell cut flowers again, and I certainly will make sure my pathetic short stories are password-protected. Mar 11, Lisa rated it liked it Shelves: Next World Novella by Matthias Politycki is a clever title: His little novel is so forgettable that he forgets about it himself.

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