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I finished Yoko Tawada's "Paul Celan und der chinesische Engel" tonight, and it's such a difficult book to describe (for me at least). One amusing fact is that this is the first German book I've read in quite a while (despite German being my mother tongue), but maybe it's not that surprising that it took a Japanese writer writing in German to make that happen. 😁

It's incredibly dense but hugely enjoyable, and veers between being very funny and somewhat dark, and I feel that by not knowing very much about Paul Celan, I missed out on lots of hidden meaning (and probably lots of fun too). It's a dreamlike story, set during lockdown in early 2020 in Berlin, of a young (I think) Paul Celan researcher called Patrik (or more often just calling himself "The Patient") in the midst of some unnamed crisis or illness who meets a mysterious "trans-siberian angel", whose grandfather knew Celan during his time in Paris.

It does really want me look into Paul Celan a lot more, and maybe even read more German literature again. I also happen to go to a reading of hers in a London bookshop tomorrow evening, on the occasion of the English translation of this book being published in the UK, so am really looking forward to that.

#YokoTawada #PaulCelanUndDerChinesischeEngel