The Invention of Curried Sausage - Hardcover

Timm, Uwe

3.47

3,449 ratings by Goodreads

9780811212977: The Invention of Curried Sausage

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0811212971 ISBN 13: 9780811212977

Publisher: New Directions Publishing, 1995

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A bestseller in Germany, The Invention of Curried Sausage was tagged a "novella," in the original sense of the word, "a little piece of news." This is what author/narrator Uwe Timm uncovers about a popular German sidewalk food, curried sausage.
Timm is convinced it originated not in Berlin in the fifties as generally supposed, but much earlier in his native Hamburg. He tracks down Lena Brucker, now living in a retirement home there. And, yes, curried sausage was her invention but it's a long story, one that Timm cajoles from her during a number of tea-time visits. It all started in April, 1945, just before the war's end when she met, seduced, and held captive a young deserter. The war was over, the lover escaped, and Lena Brucker, with remarkable ingenuity, went into business. That's where the sausage comes in!

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Review:

This clever novel tells the story of how curried sausage (a popular German street food) was created. The narrator is convinced that the delicacy was invented in his native Hamburg sometime during or after World War II, not in Berlin in the 1950s, as is commonly believed. His faint memories from childhood lead him to Lena Bruckner, the curried-sausage street vendor of his youth. He finds her living in a retirement home, and through a series of interviews, she slowly reveals the story behind the creation of curried sausage. And what a story it is! Weaving wartime intrigue, clandestine love affairs, black-market subterfuge, and life during the of the sausage while simultaneously mapping the effects of such diverse elements as war, love, and abandonment on the human spirit. A best-seller in Germany, this highly entertaining, powerful work will dazzle American readers.

German novelist Timm (Headhunter), who inserts himself as narrator and witness into the plot of this ambitious but flawed work, tracks down Lena Brucker, a blind old woman, in 1989 to verify the rumor that she "invented" curried sausage, a popular German food sold by much of the narrative, goes back to April 1945: then a humble 43-year-old food-service worker in Hamburg, has an affair with Hermann Bremer, 24, a German naval officer and deserter. Both are skipper, has been gone six years, while Hermann conceals the existence of his wife and infant son from his new lover. Writing in taut prose Timm probes the moral ambiguity pervading daily life at a time when ordinary people struggled to survive amid chaos and ruin. Neighbors spy on Lena, whose negative remarks about the Nazis are kept in a Gestapo file ("The Jews are human beings too," reads one of her recorded comments). When Germany surrenders, she is surprised and appalled by newspaper photographs of concentration camp survivors. Timm is trying Nazi totalitarianism to the "sweetly pungent anarchy" of modern Germany. To some extent he succeeds, as when he playfully inverts images of blitzkrieg and conquest: "Thus began the triumphal march of the curried sausage, starting from Grossneumarket, then to a stand on the Reeperbahn... Kiel, Cologne, Munster and Frankfurt, but strangely enough stopping at the River Main, where weisswurst held on to its territory." Still, modern German history is a lot of weight to lay on one spicy wurst.

A best-seller in Germany, this highly entertaining, powerful work will dazzle American readers.

About the Author:

Uwe Timm was born in Hamburg, Germany. His first novel, Hot Summer, was published in 1974. New Directions publishes five of his novels, including the German best selling, The Invention of Curried Sausage, and the award winning, Morenga. After apprenticing as a furrier, Timm studied philosophy and philology in Paris and Munich. He is the 1989 winner of the Munich Literary Prize. He has been called an "extraordinary story teller" (The New Yorker) and "one of the best living German Writers" (Kirkus Reviews).

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