The German Room - Softcover

Carla Maliandi

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1999859332 ISBN 13: 9781999859336

Publisher: Charco Press, 2018

Synopsis

Could we claim that The German Room invents a new genre? It would be an exaggeration, of course, but we can certainly say that this novel represents what we could call a non-coming of age tale. A female protagonist a young woman travels from Argentina to Germany trapped by emotional conflicts. When she arrives, she is constantly exposed to all kinds of adventures and incidents, some funny, others tragic. She never fully understands her situation. Instead of learning from her circumstances and moving on, she gropes around, perplexed by the reality around her, hesitating as to what to do next. It is this hesitation that turns into thrilling suspense, a book that we cant put down. We want to know what happens next, and after that. Maliandi takes us by the hand until the end of a novel that becomes, quite simply, remarkable and unforgettable.

About this title

About the Author

Carla Maliandi was born in Venezuela in 1976 and is the daughter of Argentinian philosophers Ricardo Maliandi and Graciela Fernández who were forced to escape Argentinas military regime. She is an award-winning playwright, theatre director, university lecturer and writer. She has written and directed five theatre plays, which were all staged in Buenos Aires as well as in different international theatre festivals. She has also co-written several other plays. She is part of the writers collective Rioplatensas as part of which she directs a literary journal and a TV programme. Her plays Espejo en el desierto (Mirror in the desert) and Regen (Rain) appeared in an anthology published by the National Theatre Institute of Argentina, and her short story Indio (Indian) was included in a short story collection entitled Zona de cuentos (Short Story Zone). The German Room is her first novel and was chosen by several critics as one of the best books to come out of Argentina in 2017. It will be published in France (Métailié) and Germany (Bernberg Verlag). She lives in Buenos Aires.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

I once knew the names of all the constellations. My father taught me them, while warning that the German sky above us was totally foreign to him. I was obsessed with the sky, the stars and aeroplanes. I knew that a plane had brought us to Heidelberg and that a plane would take us back to where we belonged. For me, planes had faces and personalities. And I prayed that the one that would take us back to Buenos Aires wasn’t one that would fall into the middle of the ocean and kill us all. The night before our trip, our big trip back to Argentina, our house on Keplerstrasse was filled with philosophers. We ate in the garden because it was an unusually warm and clear night. There were some Latin Americans: a Chilean who played the guitar, a serious Mexican philosopher with the requisite beard, and Mario, a young Argentinian student who was staying at our house. The Latin Americans made an effort to speak German and the Germans responded amiably in Spanish. My father argued loudly with a very tall and completely bald philosopher from Frankfurt. At one point they noticed I was frightened and they explained that they weren’t fighting, they were just discussing Nicolai Hartmann. When I was a bit older I tried to read Hartmann in order to understand what could’ve driven them to argue with such passion, but I didn’t find anything. I should sleep now but I can’t, I’m still full of nerves from the trip. I look out the window of my new room at a slice of the Heidelberg sky. The last night I was here I stared up at this same sky for a long while trying to memorise it, saying goodbye, storing its image in my mind. The Chilean philosopher played the guitar and began to sing in a gravelly voice ‘Gracias a la vida’ by Violeta Parra; and all around him the group of enthusiastic, friendly, drunk Germans sang the chorus with ridiculous accents. How many sleepless nights had I spent in the past month? Yesterday in Buenos Aires I was anxious I wouldn’t be ready for the taxi and I kept waking up long before my alarm. When I arrived at the terminal I had a strong coffee to wake me up enough to face the brief airport procedures. On the plane I was dizzy with anxiety again. But this time I wasn’t afraid of it falling, I was afraid of landing safe and sound, not knowing what to do or why I was there. Going down with the plane would’ve been easier than landing in Germany with my life in shambles, without having told anyone in Buenos Aires what I was doing. The prospect of dying on the flight was less terrifying than the thought of riding this surge of impulse to my final destination, without enough money, in a desperate attempt to find peace. And a long-lost happiness, lost and buried forever along with my father. This is not the right way to do things, but it’s the way I’ve done them and here I am. Tomorrow I’ll find a phone and call Buenos Aires, and I’ll explain as best I can. I think I’m going to be able to sleep in this place, in this bed. The room is prettier than it had looked online, and I liked everything else the caretaker showed me: the dining hall, the kitchen, and the whole downstairs of the residence. I’m sure it’s a great place for a student. But I’m not here to study anything. I’m here to sleep, to get well, and to find a bench in Marktplatz where I can sit and think calmly and eat a pretzel.

Edition details

• Publisher: Charco Press
• Publication date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1999859332
• ISBN 13: 9781999859336
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 150