The most striking and difficult aspect of this novel is its incredible scale. How can a reviewer best discuss an enterprise containing a vast survey of life in Germany, Britain and the United States and the transformations of these societies from the end of the 19th century to the 1980s?
Two volumes cover the experience of age and youth, the rise of the Nazis in Mecklenburg, the second world war, life and death in a small German town, the evolution of East German communities and the emergence of a Soviet state after the war.
The New York Times appears in more or less every chapter, as the conveyer of the story of the Vietnam war and events in the city of New York itself. There are accounts of Mafia dealings and other street crimes. The protagonists of the novel, Gesine Cresspahl and her daughter Marie, live where Uwe Johnson himself lived between 1966 and 1968: apartment 204, 243 Riverside Drive, New York, NY10025.
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