Book Review Jenny Erpenbeck Go Went Gone

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2017 Portobello Books – Spoiler alerts – translated by Susan Bernovsky A novel that draws the European refugee crisis away from the dehumanizing headlines to the very personal and real. Richard (surname unstated) is a retired literature professor in Germany, originally from the East German side of the Wall, and now somewhat adrift in the new Germany. Divorced after disastrous relationship issues, Richard plans on using his retirement to read books rather than educate others about them. When he sees news headlines on the plight of a group of African refugees who have been conducting a hunger strike in the city centre. Richard realizes that he has walked right by them without even noticing they were there. He feels guilty for being so self-absorbed. From his own increasingly voyeuristic curiosity, Richard gets to know the men, their personal stories, their cultures, their longing for work. Richard realizes that he has no idea where half the African countries are within the continent. He relates the stories the men tell to his own classical education standards, but gradually he gets to know the men as men, and as friends, even inviting these dispossessed wanderers, with no official nationality left, to live with him in his own home. A lovely, slow moving story about people alienated from home, family, relationships, youth and self identity. Richard is worried by what he doesn’t know or understand. There is a recurring metaphor of the dead body in the swimming lake, a stricken swimmer who was never found. Richard finds that while other bathers don’t care, he is troubled by it. Out of sight is not out of mind for him. In many ways, Richard’s approach to the refugees is intrusive and sometimes uninvited, but he does what the authorities purposely avoid, he sees them as three dimensional ordinary men, with dreams, needs and fears and a desperate need for acceptance, just like Richard, me, you and all of us. Arthur Chappell