In her first novel Katzenberge, Sabrina Janesch reveals a widely unknown European trauma of the Second World War. With her wonderfully beautiful language and her creative poetical concept that consists of an alternative use of two narrative voices and two story lines, she leads us into a world that has long been forgotten. She takes us on a journey to the East of Europe: first to East Poland and then into the Ukraine. At the same time, she guides us into a past that has barely been discussed in history books about the Second World War.

The protagonist of Katzenberge is Nele Leibert, a young Polish-German journalist who lives in Germany, but who visits her Polish family in Silesia regularly. When her Polish grandfather dies, Nele undertakes a journey to Poland in order to attend the funeral. The death of her grandfather provokes her to chase the demons of the past that influenced her grandfather’s life until his death and to him were real monsters. Slowly, she unravels the past of her grandfather and discovers the traumatic events that have changed his life completely. She discovers that he was born in the village Zastavne in Galicia, a place where a pogrom took place at the end of the Second World War. The Russians and the Ukrainians invaded the village and massacred all the habitants: only a few families managed to escape, among them the family of her grandfather. Although these traumatic events and the flight to Silesia have thoroughly influenced her grandfather’s life, Nele also discovers a tragic family secret that has taken the shape of a monster spying on her grandfather and following him into his tomb.

The exciting and compelling story Janesch tells in Katzenberge deserves to be translated into Dutch. The novel shows a skilful writer at work and throws light on aspects of the Second Word War that still are unknown. Like the concentration camps and the persecution of the Jews, these historical aspects should be brought into the open. In fact, the novel shows how border regions such as Galicia originated at the end of the Second World War and how these regions still cause cultural and political problems today. In the light of the current events in the Ukraine, this story is more alive than ever before.

Sabrina Janesch. Katzenberge. Roman. 277 Seiten.
ISBN: 978-3-351-03319-4
Aufbau Verlag, Berlin.
Contactpersoon voor de rechten van het boek binnen de uitgeverij: Mevr. Inka Ihmels (ihmels@aufbau-verlag.de)

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