Published 2008

Red Hen Press (US)

Translated by Zaia Alexander

Antje Ravic Strubel came to give a talk to my creative writing class at uni a couple of months ago. I was mesmerised not only by her story as the member of an interesting group of German writers known as Wende Kids (more on this later) but also just the way she spoke about writing, and the origin of Ravic, her mysterious writing space, from which she fashioned herself a middle name. She has been the writer-in-residence at the University of Technology, Sydney, and appeared at the Melbourne and Brisbane Writers Festivals, so I figured at least one bookshop would have a copy of Snowed Under: an episodic novel. My search was fruitless. Had to order it from Amazon, and then wait six weeks for it to arrive. It was kind of worth the wait though, fortunately.

Throughout the thirteen short stories that comprise the novel, we’re given a glimpse into the lives of the visitors and staff in and around the Harrachov ski resort in a small post-wall Czech town. Shifting perspectives and interweaving narratives have the potential to become disrupting, but Strubel follows it through with a strong narrative voice that remains constant. Having heard Strubel’s account of her childhood, that is, seeing the east side of the Berlin Wall come down at the age of 15, it’s hard not to notice the exploration of post-Berlin Wall psyches, even through something as simple as the forming of a relationship.

When asked, during the lecture, whether or not she could tell an East German from a West German by speaking to them,Strubel answered an immediate yes. She explained a difference that goes down to the core. For example, according to Strubel, East Germans appeared cold; their friends were few but close, while those who grew up in the West seemed to have many more friends… (here Strubel said something I can’t quite remember word for word, but hinted that the multitude of friends were on a much shallower level).

This core difference, in the way thoughts and feelings are processed and how they are communicated, is examined through (Eastern) Evy’s relationship with Vera, (from the West) and the problems they encounter at the ski lodge. Their story forms part of the common thread weaved throughout the novel.

What’s interesting is seeing how Strubel’s themes are informed by her personal experiences of nationality and identity. She described the effect collapse of the Berlin Wall on the East-siders quite poetically: people waking up and finding their country had disappeared, even though the streets and buildings looked the same.

It makes me wonder, how can any of us whose lives haven’t been as colourful dream of coming close to this raw honesty that shines through Snowed Under?

But back to the book. The translation is beautiful and the characters just feel so real you occasionally forget you’re reading just a story. It’s very snippety though. Despite the realness of the characters, they don’t elicit any feelings of long-term attachment. They enter into the story swiftly, and depart, approximately 112 pages later. And you’re left with the shell of an emotion, without a real sense of physical character to attach to it.

That being said, Strubel’s style is luscious yet clean, and, stirs, in her readers, new questions about identity and self-percerption (even if you were only one year old, and on the other side of the world, when the Berlin Wall came down).