Their story takes place in the Prenzlauer Berg district, with beautiful houses dating from the 19th century but often damaged by the war and remaining dilapidated. As a result, the beneficiaries of the communist regime preferred to settle in the large new buildings on Karl-Marx Allee, abandoning the neighborhood to artists, intellectuals, political dissidents – to the very people who would work to bring down the regime. in 1989. Among the latter are Pastor Harald, who hides an underground press in the basement of his church, and Werner, a former Wehrmacht soldier, who disguises himself as a clown to help him to spread his pamphlets. On the other hand, his son Karl, revolted by his authoritarianism, became a thug engaging in all kinds of clandestine trafficking.
As the years pass, the girls grow up, discover society, sexuality and maintain the memory of their friendship. They will eventually see each other again.
Benjamin de Laforcade unfolds this story in an impressionistic manner in small touches, leaving it to the reader to make connections as time passes. His very refined writing – a little too subtle, sometimes – is stylistic, his dissection of the characters’ feelings almost Proustian. In short, the novel of an imaginative and sensitive writer, who admitted in an interview his passion for Racine.
⇒ Berlin for them” | Roman | Benjamin de Laforcade | Gallimard, 208 pp., €19.50, digital €13
EXTRACT
“And then a kid drowned. We could have saved him, picked his little body from the surface of the water. No one had the courage to violate the border. Behind the absurdity, death strikes” .
