Sometime in the late 1970s, the narrator, a qualified but incompetent and thoroughly demotivated typesetter, gets a job in a small private printing works in East Berlin. It doesn't last long, but she has enough time to observe her three co-workers and realise that all four of them have only been allowed to work in the private sector because life has damaged them so much that they are considered no use to the state any more.

In a tightly-constructed novella that manages to give the impression of having been compiled by someone with a serious hangover even though it doesn't waste a word anywhere, Lange-Müller tells us the story of the other three castaways whilst letting us divine the essentials of the narrator's own situation (which obviously has more than a touch of autobiography about it). And she sets up a slightly backhanded memorial to a trade that has essentially disappeared in our own lifetimes, letting us decide for ourselves if we want to draw any parallels with a state that disappeared from the maps at about the same time as the last typesetter. Wonderful, sad, funny, and grumpy, all at the same time. ( )

Dit is een bijzonder boekje. In vier delen (of eerder hoofdstukken) worden de vier medewerkers van een drukkerij in Oost-Berlijn in de jaren 1970 beschreven. Het vierde deel staat los van de eerste drie. In de eerste plaats omdat het in een niet nader genoemd heden speelt, maar ook doordat het in briefvorm is geschreven en doordat er een gedeeltelijke uitleg van de sluiting van de drukkerij wordt gegeven.

Lees verder op deze pagina van mijn boekenblog. ( )