The Short End of the Sonnenallee

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Throughout the novel Brussig shows almost perfect comic timing, the humour almost never too forced, and adding one or two layers to each situation in pushing it to the limits of the believably absurd. Am kürzeren Ende der Sonnenallee (On the Shorter End of Sun Avenue) is the third novel by author Thomas Brussig. The novel is set in East Berlin in the real-life street of Sonnenallee sometime in the late 1970s or early 1980s. The film Sonnenallee, also written by Brussig, is based on the same characters but depicts a significantly different storyline. [1] Unusual is the fact that the screenplay for Sonnenallee served as the basis for the novel, rather than the other way around. Tatsächlich aber ist der schmale Episodenroman Am kürzeren Ende der Sonnenallee, der etwa Mitte der achtziger Jahre unter Ostberliner Heranwachsenden spielt und bis in die umstandslose Syntax hinein ihre Gefühls- und Erfahrungswelt evoziert, reinste, heiterste, zärtlichste Poesie des Widerstands. Und zwar des richtigen Widerstands, von dessen Risiken seinerzeit selbst die armen Prol-Kinder und multikulturellen Underdogs vom längeren Ende der Sonnenallee nicht den mindesten Begriff gehabt haben dürften. (...) So stereotyp seine Figuren auch sind, so schimmernd und vielsagend sind ihre Gesten." - Andreas Nentwich, Die Zeit The Sonnenallee is a real street in Berlin with the loveliest of names: “Boulevard of the Sun”. The “short end” of the boulevard, to which the title of Thomas Brussig’s novella refers, is the one that ended up on the wrong – that is to say, the Eastern – side of the Berlin Wall, protruding tragically from West Berlin into the Soviet Zone. Another prominent character is Uncle Heinz, Micha's uncle from West Berlin. The character shows how many living in West Berlin had a tainted, sympathetic and often condescending view on life on the other side of the wall. Uncle Heinz often smuggles small gifts for the Kuppisch family on his trips, despite the fact that everything he "smuggles" is, in fact, legal to bring into the GDR.

German author Thomas Brussig’s novel, The Short End of the Sonnenallee, is a novel set in Communist East Germany in the decade before the fall of the Berlin Wall. It is a rich, at times funny, at times sad, account of a group of interrelated individuals living in the shadow of the Berlin Wall, as the regime is showing signs of decay from within. Dr. Jenny Watson, associate professor of German in the department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures and the at Marquette University. Dr. Watson's research interests include Swedish author, Selma Lagerlöf, East German literature and history, German-Swedish poet, Nelly Sachs, and German theatre practitioner Bertolt Brecht.A charming comedy of mid-80s East Germany; funny and tender, [this book] damns totalitarianism through its warm focus on ordinary, riotous teenage life." — The Guardian A delicious slice of life in 1980s East Berlin . . . Comedy, which comes through perfectly in the sharp translation, is essential to Brussig’s project as he subverts the dread and paranoia of East German life by portraying a small world with love, tenderness, and humor hidden within it. There’s a lot to love in this flipping of the Cold War script." — Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) This is an entirely charming tale of “rich memories” and “making peace with the past”." - John Self, The Guardian

Throughout the story there is much focus on low-level rebellion by Micha and his friends, such as Wuschel's desire to listen to illegal music such as the Rolling Stones. There is some earnestness here -- there are a few arrests, shots are fired -- but almost everything is played as broad and generally very gentle comedy. The story is centered on the main character fifteen-year-old Michael "Micha" Kuppisch who lives with his parents and siblings, Sabine and Bernd, in a typical East Berlin flat. The story gives a nostalgic yet ironic outlook of living in the shorter end of Sonnenallee, a street which was divided during the creation of the German Democratic Republic, next to the Berlin Wall where the house numbering is comically told to start at number 379. Much of the story is based around Micha's love for the girl Miriam, another Sonnenallee resident, and the day-to-day lives of Micha and his friends. Mr Brussig's unseriousness is programmatic. (...) Nothing very bad happens. It is rather like a Billy Bunter book, japes and scrapes of the boys of the Remove. Not so bad; after all we had lots of fun. Is that how the GDR looks, ten years after its demise ?" - The Economist Brussig hat seine Geschichte mit frechem Witz geschrieben, ohne seine Figuren zu denunzieren." - Birgit Warnhold, Berliner MorgenpostOur main character, Micha Kuppisch, is a fifteen-year-old teenager living with his family in a typical East Berlin household. He has a sister who frequently changes boyfriends and a brother aspiring to be in the military. Other than that, he has an uncle called Heinz living in West Berlin who frequently “smuggles” goods for his family, despite the fact that most of the stuff he smuggles is actually legal to be brought to East Berlin. Also central to Micha’s life is his yearning for the affection of Miriam, the girl who is described as the most beautiful girl in the Sonnenallee and who often makes out with a guy from West Berlin on many public occasions. Rather than painting grim images of East Berlin under the GDR regime, Thomas Brussig tries to bring closer images of typical East German people’s lives. He points out that characters still listen to Western music such as the Rolling Stones or read and discuss Sartre’s works to the point of becoming an existentialist in the story. Thomas Brussig’s classic German novel, The Short End of the Sonnenallee , now appearing for the first time in English, is a moving and miraculously comic story of life in East Berlin before the fall of the Wall One of the most brilliant satirical novels about life in East Berlin, in the shadow of the wall (quite literally)”. —Daniel Kehlmann, The New York Times Book Review The Rolling Stones* подвинули другие кумиры, а от Стены остались только сувенирные фрагменты (осенью 1989, когда мы приехали на новое место службы отца в ЗГВ, она уже дышала на ладан и все поездки в Берлин были поездками в уже объединенный город).

The involvement of Franzen gives this entertaining translation of Brussig’s charming East German novel plenty of star quality. But you can see why the American was so keen to bring this superb slice of life behind the Berlin Wall to a wider audience. Written in 1999, each chapter from the point of view of teenager Michael, it is a pitch-perfect takedown of the totalitarian experience. A reminder that no matter the harshness of a situation, a community can still live with hope and humour. Oxblood Centered around young Micha Kupisch and his family and friends, the novel relates a variety of episodes exposing the bizarre and grotesque everyday lives of those living in the German Democratic Republic. This novel . . . performs what the author calls ' the miracle of making peace with the past' . . . Jonathan Franzen and Jenny Watson offer a stylish and elegant Sonnenallee." —Maren Meinhardt, The Times Literary Supplement

Young Micha Kuppisch lives on the nubbin of a street, the Sonnenallee, whose long end extends beyond the Berlin Wall outside his apartment building. Like his friends and family, who have their own quixotic dreams―to secure an original English pressing of Exile on Main St. , to travel to Mongolia, to escape from East Germany by buying up cheap farmland and seceding from the country―Micha is desperate for one thing. It’s not what his mother wants for him, which is to be an exemplary young Socialist and study in Moscow. What Micha wants is a love letter that may or may not have been meant for him, and may or may not have been written by the most beautiful girl on the Sonnenallee. Stolen by a gust of wind before he could open it, the letter now lies on the fortified “death strip” at the base of the Wall, as tantalizingly close as the freedoms of the West and seemingly no more attainable. Join author Thomas Brussig, and translators Jonathan Franzen and Dr. Jenny Watson for a panel discussion of the book and its surrounding historical context. Joining them in conversation will be Dr. Alison Efford and Dr. Sebastian Luft. Best laid plans -- regardless of whose they might be -- stand no chance for those living in Sonnenallee -- but failure is also not as terrible as it might be elsewhere, with a pervasive sense of family and camaraderie uniting almost all. Except that he warns the reader a few times too often in advance that the outcome of a given situation was to come out worse than anyone could have anticipated (an unnecessary warning), Brussig shows great command in his presentation, unfolding the story beautifully.

Micha's Uncle Heinz, who generously regularly comes to visit his poor sister and her family in the East, smuggles in candy for the kids and worries about the asbestos in the family's tiny apartment giving them all lung cancer. Thomas Brussig and Leander Haußmann were awarded the Drehbuchpreis der Bundesregierung (Screenplay Prize of the Federal Government) for their script to SonnenalleeThe Short End of the Sonnenallee, finally available to an American audience in a pitch-perfect translation by Jonathan Franzen and Jenny Watson, confounds the stereotypes of life in totalitarian East Germany. Brussig’s novel is a funny, charming tale of adolescents being adolescents, a portrait of a surprisingly warm community enduring in the shadow of the Iron Curtain. As Franzen writes in his foreword, the book is “a reminder that, even when the public realm becomes a nightmare, people can still privately manage to preserve their humanity, and be silly, and forgive.” That’s how it must have gone, thought Michael Kuppisch. How else could such a long street have been divided so close to where it ended? Sometimes he also thought: If stupid Churchill had only paid attention to his cigar, we’d be living in the West now. I)t is a pitch-perfect takedown of the totalitarian experience. A reminder that no matter the harshness of a situation, a community can still live with hope and humour." - Ben East, The Observer