While We Were Dreaming: Clemens Meyer

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We got to Chemie late, Rico and me, that Sunday in the year after the Wall came down, when we played BFC Dynamo. It was the last season of the GDR League, even though the GDR didn’t exist by then. BSG Chemie Leipzig didn’t exist any more either, we were called FC Sachsen Leipzig now, and a few months before that we’d been called FC Green-White Leipzig for a while, but we didn’t understand why, we believed in Chemie and we were Chemie, forever. BFC wasn’t called BFC either any more, they were FC Berlin, but we didn’t care, we hated them either way. How does it feel to be longlisted for the International Booker Prize 2023 – an award which recognises the art of translation in such a way that the translators and author share the prize money equally should they win – and what would winning the prize mean to you? When the Berlin Wall falls, a group of boys—Daniel, Rico, Paul, Walter, and Mark—are 13 years old and living in a poor quarter of Leipzig—that is, on the East German side of the wall. The notion of “liberation” is not part of their world view, and the wall’s fall does not bring about immediate economic prosperity to those born and raised in the German Democratic Republic. Its industries are Soviet-era, devoted to producing cheap, poorly made and designed goods no one has any use for, now that they can buy better-made goods from the West. Before the fall, when the boys are around 8 years old, their fathers have jobs, often as skilled laborers. A wide-ranging, thought-provoking, macabre and humorous novel about nationality, identity and ageing, and about the healing and destructive power of memory. It asks the question: what is our place in 20th century history, when that history seems to be constantly shifting? ‘Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be,’ they say, and this book shows us – in moving, funny and disturbing ways – how and why.

While we were Dreaming is every type of awful one can imagine: Dialogue, plot, characters – EVERYTHING. I will say it right now Die Eltern sind die Alten und sind geschieden…“ heißt es an anderer Stelle im Lied, der den Alltag der Kinder im Buch beschreiben könnte, aber doch den Alkoholismus der Eltern und die unvorstellbare Verrohung, die tägliche Gewalt auslässt. Der Zustand der Gesellschaft spiegelt sich im Zustand der Häuser und Straßen. Autoritäten in Familie, Schule und bei der Polizei sind faktisch nicht vorhanden oder reagieren hilflos bis brutal. Mit der Wende wird die Situation nicht besser, die Eltern haben noch mehr mit sich zu tun und ertränken ihre Ängste und Misserfolge. Die Jugendlichen spüren mit dem Wegfall des alten Systems und zeitgleich mit der Pubertät eine Freiheit, der sie nicht gewachsen sind, mit schnellen Autos, Pornos und Drogen. Sie führen ein Leben wie im Rausch oder im Traum, der sich später als Albtraum entpuppt. Ding! The bell rang once, the plate stopped turning and the light went off. Mark opened the door. The bread looked exactly the same as before. He took one slice out and dropped it. A book like a fist... German literature has not seen such a debut for a long time, a book full of rage, sadness, pathos and superstition.’ And I can still smell it now when I open the window even though I’m far away, but the others don’t believe a word of it. And how would they know anyway – I haven’t told them – and when we’re lying in our beds on sleepless nights, I bite down on the corner of my blanket to stop myself telling tales of those wild times.Si gioca sul filo dei ricordi in Eravamo dei grandissimi; spesso ci si torna sopra perché si tratta di qualcosa che si vorrebbe fosse andata così, ma così non è stato e a volte si cerca la versione che più si adatta a quello che si è provato in quel momento. Some will call this a masculine book, but we also see the affection between the boys and some of the characters in the neighborhood. They feel real even if this is a singular experience I can’t relate to. They’re living in this chaotic time, but, almost like in ‘Ninth Building', this is happening around them and not directly commented on. The politics are never mentioned, but we see the systems fall apart around them. We see this when Danny and Rico go to a football game and the cops begin to throw tear gas and eventually start shooting into the crowd, killing a man. The Eastern German police don’t know what to do with themselves as the structures break down. I can’t see anything,’ I said. ‘We should be able to see something by now, it should be getting brown or something.’ There are two other areas where young men are traditionally involved. Danny and his father are supporters of Chemie Leipzig and, of course, football often means violence between fans and we see it in this book. Indeed, Danny’s father goes to prison for it. So una filastrocca. La canticchio tra me e me quando la testa comincia a giocarmi strani scherzi. Credo che la cantassimo da bambini saltellando da un rettangolo di gesso all’altro, ma può essere che me la sia inventata o l’abbia soltanto sognata. Certe volte la recito in silenzio, solo muovendo le labbra, altre mi metto a canticchiarla e nemmeno me ne accorgo perché mi ballano in testa i ricordi, no, non dei ricordi qualsiasi, ma quelli dopo la magnifica caduta del Muro, degli anni in cui siamo, come dire? Venuti in contatto (..) Non c’è notte in cui non sogni queste cose, e di giorno mi ballano in testa i ricordi, e mi tormento a chiedermi perché tutto è andato com’è andato. Certo, ai tempi ci divertivamo anche un sacco, ma in quel che facevamo avevamo sempre dentro un senso di smarrimento che non riesco a spiegare>>.

Clemens Meyer’s great art of describing people takes the form of the Russian doll principle: a story within a story within a story. ... So much is so artfully interwoven that his work breaks the mould of the closed narrative.’ The novel’s treatment of class, masculinity and violence is memorable; yet it is the slangy, adrenal language – brilliantly rendered into English by Katy Derbyshire – that impresses most.’ That thing about the boy’s mother, it’s not true. She got a job at a new Shell garage in 1992 and pretended not to recognize us when we bought beer or vodka or korn from her, because it was night and the shops were shut and the walls of the Leipzig Premium Pilsner Brewery were just too high sometimes. Quando ne ho iniziato la lettura, questo libro non mi ha colpito da subito, mi ha conquistato in corsa, senza fretta, con pazienza. Forse perché in principio mi sono ostinato, senza riuscirci, a voler ritrovare me stesso da qualche parte, perché in fondo continuo a pensare che si legge per cercare se stessi tra le righe di una pagina. Non sempre però riesce, almeno non in questo caso, non in una storia così distante da me, con personaggi con cui ho davvero poco in comune.

Standing Heavy by GauZ’, translated from Ivoirian by Frank Wynne, is about two generations of Ivoirians trying to make their way as undocumented workers in Paris. Reviewing the book in the Guardian, John Self described it as “inventive and very funny”. Meyers Erzählkunst ist nicht von der Hand zu weisen. Die Charaktere springen förmlich aus dem Buch und führen der Leserin ihre Erfahrungen vor Augen. Wir sind mit Daniel in den Kneipen unterwegs, mit Rico im Boxring, mit Fred im geklauten Auto und in Pitbulls Partykeller. Wir sind im Eastside, dem von den Freunden gegründeten Club in einer alten Fabrikhalle, wir sind im dunklen, verrammelten Kino und sprechen im Feuerzeugschein mit einem heroinsüchtigen Jugendlichen. Zig Szenen haben sich in mein Hirn gebrannt und brachten mir die Stimmung und die Gefühle dieser Jugend und die Dynamiken in der damaligen Gesellschaft unglaublich nahe.

What was the experience of working with the book’s translator, Katy Derbyshire, like? How closely did you work together on the English edition? Did you offer any specific guidance or advice? Were there any surprising moments during your collaboration, or joyful moments, or challenges? In dem Roman "Als wir träumten" von Clemens Meyer handelt es sich um die Zeit vor und nach der Wende in Leipzig-Ost, und die dort lebenden Menschen. Although the novel is Clemens’ debut, it’s the fourth of his books that I’ve translated. I think the translation itself took about six to eight months, but because the book itself has been haunting me since it first came out in 2006, the process feels much longer – like the previous three translations were laying the ground for this one over the years.

Whale by Cheon Myeong-kwan, who is also a film-maker, is translated from Korean by Chi-Young Kim. It is a collection of stories about the lives of linked characters in a remote village in South Korea. The shortlist of six books will be announced at London Book Fair on 18 April, with the winner announced at a London ceremony on 23 May. This year’s 13-strong longlist contains three languages – Bulgarian, Catalan and Tamil – that have never appeared before. In total, the list comprises 11 languages with three writers – GauZ’, Zou Jingzhi and Amanda Svensson – whose work has appeared in English for the first time.

Derbyshire explains some of the translation choices she made here, including the titles of her previous translations (this one easier). It's interesting to note how her say "I want the characters’ language to change subtly as they get older, from childhood to youthful bravado to jaded machismo" as she definitely succeeds in this, and generally in the tone of the story, which is all the more striking with the non-chronological nature of the novel, this tone, as well as more explicit references, acting to signpost where we are at any point in time. I would just mention that there is a film version of this book which I have seen and it is well worth viewing. It is a reasonably faithful adaptation of the book, though it cuts out some episodes, reduces others and changes one or two things, particularly the chronology. Publishing historyManhattan Transfer by John Dos Passos. When I was reading it, around 1997, I thought, ‘Wow, that’s true modernism’. It was similar to [Alfred] Döblin’s Berlin Alexanderplatz, but more fragmented, more nervous, with all these shortcuts and cut-ups, the voices and influences of the big city. It was an overwhelming reading experience.