German in the UK

Translated by Anthea Bell
Peirene Press

Peirene Press is doing wonderful things for translated fiction in this country. Publishing three works of contemporary fiction in translation annually, the first batch last year were widely acclaimed, and found their way onto several 'Best of 2010' lists in the national papers by the end of the year. 2011 starts with similar promise, with an extraordinary novella by the German author Matthias Politycki. The TLS has called Peirene's books "Two-hour books to be devoured in a single sitting: literary cinema for those fatigued by film", and the mesmerising Next World Novella continues this tradition; although it does make a concession to the digital generation by having its very own trailer.

The protagonist Hinrich is a contented academic, researching ancient Chinese philology. He is accustomed to waking late and entering the living room to find his wife, Doro, bent over her writing desk, editing the paper he had been working on the day before. Today is different, though, the eerie atmosphere that hangs over the whole novella announced by the opening exclamation – "If only it hadn't been for that smell!". When Hinrich discovers that Doro is slumped over the desk not in sleep but in death, the quiet self-assurance that had bound together his life until now begins to unravel.

The church clock across the road chimes the passing hours as the reader views Hinrich's response to this cataclysm, and new narratives intrude as we reach back through the couple's past. One layer of narrative arises from the manuscript that Doro had been editing – not, as Hinrich assumes, one of his academic papers, but the opening pages of a novel that he had started to write as a young man. Doro's detailed annotations and her commentary on these pages peel back yet more layers of their shared past, of the secrets that Hinrich and Doro had kept from each other, of obsessions and deceit. As Hinrich's understanding of his marriage disintegrates, the reader's faith in the reliability of any one narrative crumbles with it.

At the root of the story and of all its relationships is the Chinese I Ching, the classic text to which Doro's academic career had been devoted, and in particular its image of the afterlife (the 'next world' of the novella's title). Doro's obsession had been to produce commentaries on the I Ching's symbols, and the novella itself slips between a series of commentaries – Hinrich's account of his discovery of Doro's body; Doro's commentary on the unfinished novel and the confessions that it unleashes from Hinrich; and the commentary on Hinrich's life given secretly (and falsely?) by the mysterious Dana, the third figure in what emerges as a bizarre love triangle.

Next World Novella is a genuine page-turner, and the kind of book that you want to tell everyone about as soon as you’ve put it down. It’s not published until the end of February, but Peirene subscribers will have copies dropping onto their doormats in the next couple of weeks. Politycki, whose brilliant and varied oeuvre includes the forthcoming London für Helden – The Ale Trail, an expedition into the world of English real ale, will be in the UK for much of February and early March – catch him if you can.

Matthias Politycki was featured in New Books in German in 2009, in a feature on Writers in Residence. For this and reviews of the best new German-language novels, see www.new-books-in-german.com.

Matthias Politycki was Writer in Residence at Queen Mary, University of London from September to December 2009. Born in Karlsruhe in 1955, he has been a freelance author since 1990 and lives in Hamburg and Munich. Jenseitsnovelle was published in 2009, and his new publication is London für Helden – The Ale Trail (Hoffmann und Campe, 2011).

Anthea Bell is one of the UK's most prolific and important translators. She has translated a great deal of young adult fiction, including Cornelia Funke's Inkworld trilogy, as well as some of the most significant works of contemporary German literature, such as W.G. Sebald's Austerlitz. She has received numerous awards, including the Schlegel-Tieck prize, most recently in 2009 for her version of Burning Secret by Stefan Zweig. Anthea translated The Blind Side of the Heart by Julia Franck, shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and reviewed last year here on Think German Books.