In the Soviet part of Berlin, from 1967 to 1988, Hannah and Judith survive thanks to an indestructible friendship. For his second novel, Benjamin de Laforcade touches the heart.
They meet in a vacant lot in East Berlin, not far from the wall that cuts the city in two. Judith and Hannah are 6 years old in 1967.
A blonde and a brunette who felt this connection from the first glance. Judith has black eyes, Hannah has pink eyelids. They stare at each other without saying anything, they are as if petrified. […] Hannah and Judith let themselves be drawn into what is born between them. In silence, they tell each other about joy, curiosity, shyness, the desire to laugh and the desire to play. »
For his second novel, Benjamin de Laforcade, a young French writer living in Berlin, uses his pen to slip into the shoes of these two girls. He will follow them until adulthood, in 1988, thus recounting the dark years of the GDR, the moment when the totalitarian and dictatorial state gave in to the desire for freedom. The two heroines do not participate directly in the historical events.
But their lives, their loves, are deeply impacted. Judith is the daughter of a Stasi official, the political police who set up a ruthless system of surveillance of fellow citizens. Everyone is suspect, everyone can denounce their neighbor. Hannah comes from a more modest, hard-working background. Her mother did not want to be burdened with a husband.
A colleague has devoted himself, since then she has raised her daughter alone, courageously. Other characters play a role in the lives of Judith and Hannah: Michael, Judith’s younger brother, a dissident pastor or Karl, a small-time crook taking advantage of the system to reign terror.
In the present tense, without embellishment, this text tells the stifling reality of life in East Berlin, when freedom was just a few meters away… behind the wall.
“Berlin for them” by Benjamin de Laforcade, Gallimard, 208 pages, €19.50
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