JOST A MON

I came across a reference to Muhi al-Din Lari in Ziauddin Sardar's magisterial Mecca: The Sacred City. Lari was supposed to be a hugely influential miniaturist, famous for his 16th century pilgrimage guide to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, the Kitab Futuh al-Haramayn. The book, written in mystical and ecstatic Persian prose and illustrated by Lari, was produced in various editions - in Mecca, Turkey, Persia and India. Its depiction of the Sacred Mosque became the de facto standard for imagery of the Kaaba for centuries thereafter.

Sardar called Lari an Indian painter. He also said that very little is known about the man's life. He is supposed to have died around 1526, but I've also seen 1521 as a possible year of death. A brief bit of rummaging about the internet located a book that said Lari was Persian, though his chief work, the pilgrim's guide (written about 1505 or so), had been dedicated to the sultan of Gujarat. I suppose this is possible - Lari might refer to a person from the Iranian town of Lan, not far from Shiraz. Indeed, another book said he was a student of a famous Persian scholar who did indeed travel to Lar. On the other hand, there is a Lar in Uttar Pradesh too.

In the early 1500s, a famous artist would have had a selection of patrons to choose from - the Lodis in Delhi, the Bengal sultanate, even the Bahmanis in the Deccan, besides the rulers of Gujarat. What would prompt a painter from North India to seek the favour of a Gujarati sultan? It's still possible, of course, that Lari was, indeed, Iranian. His teacher wanted to move to India in search of cultural patronage, and it's possible that he either accompanied his teacher, or that he was inspired by the idea to seek the patronage of a Western Indian king.

I'd be interested to learn how Sardar determined that Lari was Indian. Where was he born? Where did he live? When did he go on his pilgrimage? What are the other works he created? How is it known when he died? Perhaps there are still myriads of Persian manuscripts that haven't been translated which might tell us more about this early polymath.

(At any rate, I have drafted an article with as much information as I could find and put it on Wikipedia's sandbox. If I can find a couple more citations and add a bit more to the piece, I might be happy enough to post it as an article.)

Growing up in Moscow in the 70s, I'd devour Russian books, as many as I could get my hands on. The Soviet publishing machine was prolific, especially where children's books were concerned, but their availability was always a matter of chance. As Mark Grigorian pointed out to me, in the USSR, one could never be sure which book would suddenly be banned. So books were a scarce commodity; they would always be treasured, passed from hand to hand, read till they fell apart from use.

My dad, meanwhile, stalked the bookstores for translations into English. He wasn't always successful. In any case, although the books were relatively cheap, his salary didn't quite extend to large-scale purchases. Still, he managed to amass a small collection of fiction by the great Russians.

When we came back to India, I discovered English translations of the books I'd loved. Exported from the USSR as part of cultural propaganda - no wonder hardly any were available in Moscow. At the time, I wasn't fussed about the quality of the translation - if it conveyed the story with fidelity, I was content. Nor did I particularly bother about the translators. Some of my favourite books were translated by a Margaret Wettlin. But other than wondering if her last name should have been spelled Wetlina, in the feminine Russian ending, I didn't think too much about it.

Recently, I found out that Wettlin was an American woman who had sailed off to Russian in 1932 to join what she thought was a great social experiment - the establishment of a new economic model for the world. Disappointed by the fraying of the American social fabric during the Great Depression, she fancied an adventure in an unknown land. She taught English for a bit in Russia, fell in love with a theatre director, had children. Then Stalin announced that foreigners would either have to take up Soviet citizenship, or leave. Unwilling to abandon her family, she naturalised. She would end up staying in the USSR for nearly fifty years.

Her house was a hotbed of artistic fervour. Her husband was a friend of Stanislavsky; there were actors and playwrights in and out of their lives. The family travelled extensively across the country, even to Mongolia, setting up regional theatres. It was a heady time. It was also a nervous time for her, personally, as the KGB recruited her to spy on her neighbours.

Then the war happened and they were caught in Moscow. The suffering of the Russians during that bitter conflict has been covered extensively. The famines in the Soviet Union caused by misguided Communist policies are also well-known. Her own voice was added with the eventual publication of Fifty Russian Winters: An American Woman's Life in the Soviet Union.

After the war, Wettlin began to translate Russian fiction into English for publication by the Soviet press. Her translations of Gorky, Pasternak, and Tolstoy were well received. As I found out, she also translated Nikolai Nosov, whose books I still recall with undimmed affection.

She continued to live in Moscow till about 1980, when the Soviets finally granted permission for her, her daughter and grandson to leave the country. The US State Department determined that she had become a Soviet citizen under duress and restored her US citizenship. She returned to Philadelphia. Her son couldn't join her for another seven years.

Wettlin died in 2003.

(Image: The Daily Telegraph.)

The heart-stoppingly gorgeous Margaret Audrey White was denied a job in the BBC as a television announcer in 1951. The reason was that her loveliness could have "alarmed timid men from Wigan and country districts". A commentator said, “Could you watch Miss White talking about depressions over Iceland and absorb what she was saying?”

She graciously accepted the decision: "I do not want to scare any timid male viewers."

Instead, she went on to become a famous bibliophile, supporter of charities, and most importantly to educate women on financial planning and cash management. It ran for eight years - very successfully - until she had to close it when the Equal Opportunities Commission said she was being discriminatory.

(Reference: Lady Wardington - obituary. The Daily Telegraph, Nov 14, 2014.)

It was only when he was in his 80s that Paul Dirac's digestive ailment was finally diagnosed. Eating, for him, was a chore and a burden. 

(Graham Farmelo, The Strangest Man: The Life of Paul Dirac.)

Although she did not drink martinis, she graciously prepared a double for me every evening before dinner. I introduced her to Tanqueray gin and Noilly Pratt vermouth, the ingredients for a perfect martini. Sensitive husband that I was, I courteously congratulated her every day on a fine martini, cautiously suggesting that it might be a touch drier. Day after day, I congratulated her, suggesting that it might be a touch drier still. One day I sipped the martini and bathed her in kisses: “Betsey, you’re wonderful, it’s perfect.” She did not take well to my gushing. Betsey almost never raised her voice, but raise it she did: “I knew it! I knew it! Of course I’m wonderful! Of course it’s perfect! You’re drinking straight gin.”

Detlef Bernd Blettenberg (October 13, 1949, Wirges - ) is a German writer and reporter.

Blettenberg was born an only child in a working class family, growing up in Elgendorf, a small village community. In 1966, he moved to Leverkusen where he undertook an apprenticeship as a draughtsman in mechanical engineering. He then did his military service, and after attending the Naval Signal School at Flensburg- Mürwig he went to sea as a radio operator.

In 1972, he joined an international development agency where he would spend the next two decades. He was a development worker in Ecuador between 1972-76 where he helped coordinate vocational training at the Ministry of Education in Quito. Ecuador was the setting of his novels Weint nicht um mich in Quito and Agaven sterben einsam.

Between 1982-86, Blettenberg was a commissioner in the German Development Service in Thailand; 1992-94 in Nicaragua; 2003-2004 in Ghana. His novels Siamesische Hunde and Farang were set in Thailand, while Blauer Rum and Null Uhr Managua were set in Nicaragua, and Murnaus Vermächtnis in Ghana.

Between these missions abroad, he worked as a consultant for vocational training and trade promotion in Bonn and later in Berlin. These roles led him regularly to Africa, Latin America, Asia and Arabia. In addition, he has published technical papers for professional training, for business promotion and technology transfer. Berlin is the stage for several of his novels, especially in Barbachs Bilder and Berlin Fidschitown. Impressions from his numerous foreign trips are reflected in the novels Harte Schnitte and Land der guten Hoffnung.

Blettenberg is married to the actress Andrea Heuer.

****

Blettenberg is a four-time winner of the Deutscher Krimi Preis: Farang (1989), Blauer Rum (1995), Berlin Fidschitown (2004), and Murnaus Vermächtnis (2011).


Check out this appraisal of Blettenberg's books: "Being involved heightens the feelings" : Political detective novels on the edge by DB Blettenberg by Elfriede Müller (translated by Sue Neale).


Again, no English translation appears to have come out. I did find a Romanian title.

[Continuing my series of little biographical sketches of winners of the Deutscher Krimi Preis. This one is a quick and dirty translation of Peter Mohr's note "A Late Bloomer" in celebration of Hans Werner Kettenbach's 80th birthday, published on May 14, 2008, at literaturkritik.de.]

For a highly successful writer, Hans Werner Kettenbach may have found his way to literature unusually late in life, but actually he has always been a late bloomer. He started his first job at age 28, he married at thirty, he graduated at the age of 36, and he only published his first novel just before his 50th birthday. In between he had been a construction worker, a stenographer and an Assistant Editor of the sports magazine "Kicker". When he was planning to emigrate to Caracas, the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger offered a job. Clearly this was anything than a model curriculum vitae for a writer.

A happy coincidence paved the way for Hans Werner Kettenbach, who was born on April 20, 1928 in Bendorf near Koblenz, to enter the world of literature. In 1977, he participated in a crime competition offered by a prestigious publishing house. With his manuscript Grand mit Vieren, which he had written after careful design in fourteen days, he won the first prize.

It was followed by the novels Glatteis (Black Ice), Sterbetage (filmed under the title Im Jahr der Schildkröte), and Schmatz oder Die Sackgasse which netted the Deutscher Krimi Preis for him in 1988. Nevertheless, the successful author remained a part-time writer. His main profession continued at the "Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger" - until his retirement in 1992 as Deputy Editor-in-Chief.

Kettenbach's two hats - journalism and literature - were extremely fruitful. Journalism informed the timeliness of his novels, and literature meant a respite from the politics of the day, while the many contacts he had made as a political journalist proved of great benefit for his literary work.

The novel Die Konkurrentin (2002), in which a successful local politician becomes entangled in a finely spun web of intrigue, takes place in a major Rhineland city. Here, one presumes, Kettenbach drew equally from his journalistic experience as he did in Kleinstadtaffäre (2004), in which the aging, successful writer Carl Wallot comes to a reading in a small town and is drawn into a power struggle with the dodgy manufacturer Kepler, who pulls all the strings in the province. Meanwhile, Zu Gast bei Dr. Buzzard (2006) goes into the mysterious events and emotional rollercoaster rides of two couples who befriend each other while travelling in the United States.

In addition, the passionate cigar smoker has been equally successful as a screenwriter: he wrote some episodes for the series Peter Strohm at the end of 1980s, the script "Ausgespielt" (with Manfred Krug), and was also involved in the film adaptation of his novel Davids Rache (David's Revenge) (1995).

He is inspired "not only by Patricia Highsmith, but also by Georges Simenon", says Hans Werner Kettenbach. For him, it's not just the psychologizing, but also the exciting stories of sympathetic ordinary figures standing in the background. In the near future he would like to fulfil his younger daughter's wish and "finally write a cheerful book".


Kettenbach's Schmatz oder Die Sackgasse won the Deutscher Krimi Preis in 1988.

****

I'm pleased to say that not only has Hans Werner Kettenbach been translated into English but I've also read one of his books. Glatteis (Black Ice) was decent, although for some reason I don't appear to have mentioned it during my various slogs through translated crime fiction. Perhaps I misremember how good it was? This book, The Stronger Sex and David's Revenge are all available from that fine publisher Bitter Lemon Press.

[Continuing my series of little biographies of winners of the Deutscher Krimi Preis. This one comprises translated excerpts from the German Wikipedia.]

Heiner Michael Molsner (April 23, 1939, Stuttgart - ) is a German journalist, scriptwriter and author of crime fiction and children's books.

The son of a writer and a journalist, Molsner grew up in Olsztyn, Aalen and Munich. After graduating high school in 1959, he studied German and English literature at the University of Heidelberg. Following an editorial internship, he first held a court reporter role in Munich, then journalism appointments in Hamburg and Hanover. Since 1968, he has been a freelance writer. He is one of the founders of the "Verband deutscher Schriftsteller" (Association of German Writers), a body representing the interests of professional writers, and "Autorengruppe deutschsprachige Kriminalliteratur – Das Syndikat" (The Syndicate, an association of German crime fiction authors).

Since 2000, Molsner has lived in the Ruhr area - first in Dortmund and now in Duisburg.

Acclaim in the press has been widespread: "This man knows how to entertain an audience." (Buchreport, May 2000); "Unusually smart ... his novels have Anglo-Saxon qualities" (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, August 16, 1985); "...has narrative verve and a sophisticated understanding of the social milieu" (Frankfurter Rundschau, 1996); "The best kind of challenging and addictive word play that I can think of" (Eugen Drewermann reviewing Molsner's Schwarzen Faktor). Der Spiegel wrote: "...Molsner, a trained journalist, has proven to have the greatest narrative range and multifaceted understanding of the social conditions and consequences of crime. These are exemplified in his thriller Rote Messe, published in 1973: a sociological study of a small town fearful of student agitations leading to the deaths of two migrant workers. Molsner has been compared to Leonard Sciascia and Sjöwall and Wahlöö, and lauded for his "educative entertainments and entertaining educations".

*****

Michael Molsner has won the Deutscher Krimi Preis thrice: Die Euro-Ermittler: Der ermordete Engel (1987), Unternehmen Counterforce (1988), and Die Ehre einer Offiziersfrau and Euro-Ermittler: Urians Spur (1989). In 1998, he was awarded a special prize by The Syndicate for his services to the German crime fiction fraternity.

The Euro-Ermittler (Investigator) series dealt with issues of economic and state crime. Another of his series Global-Agenten examined political topics across Europe, the Balkans, and the Middle-East.

*****

When asked why he wrote crime fiction, he replied: "I was a child in Olsztyn, East Prussia - northeast of Auschwitz and southwest of the Wolf's Lair. Murder there was an everyday office business. The quotidian life is the subject of literature. But literature must also be fun. And so we have the sellable form: crime fiction."

[Continuing my series of little biographies of winners of the Deutscher Krimi Preis. This one is a vague translation of a profile of Frank Göhre titled 'The Exception', by Ilke Kreutzträger (November 12, 2010), on Taz.de.]

Gruff, shameless, profound. That's the kind of books Frank Göhre writes. He gradually developed a reputation as a pornographer of the crime genre. Many photographs show him in a hat, with moustache and long coat, always looking a little grim. Just as a crime writer should.

On his webpage, he has written an 'Obituary within a lifetime' for himself. ...his sexual fantasies became so extensive that his manuscripts were no longer accepted. His writing career ended abruptly. The once-popular writer spent his last years in a hotel suite on Miami Beach, where he died in the arms of a Cuban transvestite last Friday.

And waiting at the appointed spot on the overpass by the jetty is this older gentleman. He wears a baseball cap for his stroll along the harbour. He has a warm handshake, a soft voice, kind eyes.

Frank Göhre was born in 1943 in Děčín (in the Sudetenland), and grew up in Bochum. At the age of 15, he quit school because, as he says, he was so bad at Latin. It did not look like he'd become the writer who would later in life be feted as an innovator in the German noir. He worked at a wholesale merchant's and then trained to be a bookseller. At the end of the 1960s, he joined the protests against the miserable training conditions faced by apprentices, and began at this time to write his first short stories.

He won a prize for a radio drama, and then began to receive commissions from the German public radio stations (NDR and WDR). Before he decided to become a freelance writer in 1973, he continued as a bookseller.

It seems he learned his meticulous work habits from that time. He is no mere storyteller; he is a researcher. He does not merely invent characters and let them do fictional things, but rather he investigates their personalities and saves everything he learns in case he might need it for a later story. He writes in his diary how the weather was, keeps newspaper clippings, notes down current events, scribbles on a possible story that might be interesting to a reader, perhaps even evoked memories of the time.

Göhre came to Hamburg in 1981 where he lives today with his wife in Winterhude, close to the city park. He teaches at the writers' school in Hamburg, or the screenplay camp in Freiburg, or at Ludwigsburg's Film Academy.

He doesn't like the fixed nature of a screenplay where from the outset, everything should hold together rigidly. While writing a novel, he feels much freer. He might know more or less the kind of solution he might propose for a story, but if his wife asked him on an evening which direction he might take, he would be unable to offer any information.

Göhre's daily routine is much more predictable. He is a morning person. By eight, he is usually seated at his desk in his four metres square study which is full of bookshelves. In fact, only the balcony is free from books. He writes in the mornings, and in the afternoons, he works on proofs or answers emails. The hard tasks. His wife has noticed a certain rhythm in his work, he says. He might write fast and loose a day or two, do nothing for the next two or three days, and then throw much away. Previously there were days when entire passages of text were consigned to the trashcan, and he thought he was lost for days. But nowadays he is not worried.

In his novel, Eloi - Der Auserwählte (Eloi - The Chosen One) it took Göhre five attempts to find the right beginning. Five times he wrote the text, cut out individual paragraphs, shifted the snippets back and forth, trying different combinations until they fit.

Göhre preserved all the intermediate steps of his work. He cleared out his attic, installed shelves and set up his archive. All his works are saved, even the double editions. When he is finished with a book, he said, he packed everything into an IKEA box and took it to the attic. He has finalised his will, he said. He doesn't think of death, but he knows there are family disputes in the estates of many authors.

He speaks of his new book in the same satisfied tones he spoke of his estate. Nobody in the German-speaking world writes as he does, he says, no one interleaves their plots as him. People have praised his flashbacks and changes of perspective. This is not difficult for him because he thinks not in dialogue but in images. He is an exception, he says. And there is no immodesty or boastfulness in this claim.

His years as a bookseller have given him a long view into the genre. It is something missing in his younger colleagues. Many have never heard of Chandler, he says, his face looking grim for the first time. Writing detective fiction is not as easy as many retired teachers seem to think, he says. It does not merely involve an assembly of characters, red herrings and then revealing the most unexpected person as the perpetrator.

In the summer, Göhre and his wife want to stay a month in Amsterdam. He will collect stories, do some research. Next week he will go there to find a small apartment with a garden, overlooking the canal. He has always wanted to do this, he says, and now he finally has the time.


Frank Göhre won the Deutscher Krimi Preis in 1987 for Der Schrei des Schmetterlings, and in 2011 for Der Auserwählte.


English translations? Pshaw.

[Continuing my series of little biographical posts of the Deutschen Krimi Preis winners, translated from the German Wikipedia.]

Horst Bieber (January 12, 1942, Essen - ) is a German journalist and writer of crime fiction.

Bieber studied history, philosophy and German literature at university, obtaining a doctoral degree. He began his journalism career at the Essener Tageszeitung. He is a political editor has also been a member of the editorial board of Die Zeit.

His writing career began with historical non-fiction: a book on Paul Rohrbach - a conservative journalist and critic of the Weimar Republic (1972), and a work on Portugal (1975). In 1982, he published his first thriller Sackgasse (Dead end).

In his novels, Bieber addresses topical issues of society and politics: data protection, the intrusiveness of intelligence agencies, problematic police investigations. His strengths are the precision of his observation and strong storytelling talent.

Bieber has also written several crime dramas for radio, broadcast on the Westdeutscher Rundfunk, German public radio.

Bieber's journalistic career is well-respected: his work on environmental issues and the Green party, in particular, has been recognised.

In 1987, Bieber received the Deutscher Krimi Preis for Sein letzter Fehler (His Last Error).

*****

And, again, no sign of English versions of his books. Found a Polish one, though...

[Continuing my series of little biographical posts of the Deutscher Krimi Preis winners. This one is badly translated from the German Wikipedia articles on Norbert Klugmann and Peter Mathews]
 
Norbert Klugmann (August 27, 1951, Uelzen - ) is a German journalist and novelist. He has written crime fiction, thrillers, satire and children's books.

Klugmann was the youngest of three children born to Hildegard, a housewife, and Willi Klugmann, a canteen worker at the town railway station. The family had come from Eastern Pomerania, fleeing to the West post-World War II. After high school, Klugmann first studied German and sociology at Hamburg University, with the aim of becoming a teacher; he also took some classes in general studies including medicine, but did not finish at the University.

In 1979, Klugmann met the actress Karin Roscher-Hoffknecht; they married two years later. They had a daughter in 1996, and divorced in 2005. Since 1998, Klugmann has lived in Wellingsbüttel, near Hamburg.

Klugmann's journalistic career began in 1979: he freelanced for the music magazine Sounds,and also took up a role in the press office of the Norddeutscher Rundfunks. In the 1980s, he worked for Zeit magazine. Backed by his earnings, he was then able to concentrate on his literary career.

Between the 1970s and 2012, Klugmann had written over 70 novels, of which ten were in collaboration with Peter Mathews.

****

Peter Mathews (October 22, 1951, Bremerhaven - ) is a German author of crime fiction, a ghostwriter and copywriter.

Mathews took up an apprenticeship as an industrial clerk at the Hamburg school of Economics and Politics, and graduated with a degree in Economics. Until 1980, he worked at various publishers, while between 1980 and 2000, he was an advertising manager, editor and publisher at Rowohlt publishing house. From 2004-2008, he was a literary agent and publisher, and since 2008, he has worked as a freelance journalist in Berlin.

Between 1984 and 1999, he collaborated with Norbert Klugmann on a series of crime novels and stories, and also published a thriller magazine.

****

Norbert Klugmann and Peter Mathews won the Deutscher Krimi Preis in 1986 for their novels Flieg, Adler Kühn and Ein Kommissar für alle Fälle.

[Continuing my series of little biographical posts of the Deutscher Krimi Preis winners. This one is badly translated from the French Wikipedia.]

Peter Schmidt (August 11, 1944 - ) is a German psychologist, cognitive scientist, and author of crime and science fiction. He is also known under his nom-de-plumes of Peter Cahn and Mike Jaeger.

Schmidt was born in Gescher, Germany. He studied literature and philosophy at the University of Bochum, with a specialisation in psychology.

During the Cold War, German critics considered Schmidt the one serious writer in espionage fiction (Stern magazine). His novel Schafspelz (Sheepskin) was recognised as the first breach in the Anglo-Saxon monopoly of thrillers (Capital magazine). In his novels, Schmidt anticipated many developments in contemporary society: the collaboration of the German ministry of national security with the Red Army Faction (Die Regeln der Gewalt (Rules of Violence)), or corrupt monetary dealings by East Germany's Finance Minister Schalk-Golodkowski (Ein Fall von großer Redlichkeit (A Case of Great Honesty)), which led to his being persecuted by the Stasi during his travels in the Eastern bloc.

In his ambiguous and enigmatic detective comedies (Linders Liste (1988), Roulette (1992), Schwarzer Freitag (1993)) Schmidt also represents a unique genre of literary crime novel, which is dominated by irony, philosophical reflection and satirical approach to human weaknesses. Meanwhile, the starting point of Einsteins Gehirn (2012) is a historical crime: after Einstein's death the pathologist Thomas Harvey stole the brain of the creator of the theory of relativity. When, after years of travelling around the United States in the back of Harvey's truck, it was returned to the Princeton hospital, a Swiss admirer of the genius commissioned a small-time crook Edwin Klein to nick the precious relic and bring it to Europe. It is a curious confusion. Half a century later the 14-year old Albert researches the circumstances of his birth, as he encounters a mysterious bottle of nitrogen in his father's basement. During his own odyssey around the globe, Albert, hailed as a wunderkind because of his superior intellectual abilities, is invited to talk shows on CNN; he appears on the cover of Time magazine, discusses happiness with the Dalai Lama, argues with President George W. Bush about the failure of his foreign policy, and during an audience with Pope Benedict, finally the mystery of his true origin is resolved.

Schmidt's science fiction includes Gen Crash (1994), an epidemiology thriller involving scientists researching a cure for influenza; 2999 - Das dritte Millennium (1999) depicts a high-tech ecological dictatorship in a Europe that remains green while the other continents continue to pollute (this book, amazingly, has been translated into Czech. Czech!); Endzeit (2004) has a mad researcher who creates prehistoric pterosaurs that terrorise his city.

In his philosophical novel Montag oder Die Reise nach innen (Monday, or the Inward Journey) (1989), Schmidt describes the progression of a meditative consciousness towards greater emotional intelligence in the style of a Bildungsroman, telling the story of a gifted young protagonist, Marc Herzbaum. The ideas in the novel germinated from his own scientific researches into emotional intelligence: Schmidt developed a cognitive technique called EQ-Training, which enabled people to overcome stress, allowing them to better control their fears and other negative feelings.

Schmidt is a three-time winner of the Deutscher Krimi Preis: Erfindergeist (1986); Die Stunde des Geschichtenerzählers (1987); Das Veteranentreffen (1991). He has also won the Ruhr Literary Prize in 1994 for his lifetime of work.

And - as far as I can make out - none of his novels has been translated into English.

Boris Akunin likes to trawl through old family photo-albums and gaze at the portraits and try to imagine what fates befell their subjects. Often he looks for a long time at a photograph and concocts an entire biography, and then he looks at the back of it and more often than not realises that his romantic imaginations do not match the facts.

This is a picture he posted on his blog.

A lovely little girl. Surely, thought Akunin, this is a girl who had a wonderful destiny, beautiful loves, a life full of drama and unexpected twists (after all, she would have lived in twentieth century Russia). And the girl would surely become someone, because not only was she beautiful but there were makings of an extraordinary personality.

Then he turned the photo over to the other side and learned that little Lyuba Lokshina was born March 9, 1917, and died April 12, 1929. As far as I can make out, she died when a balcony collapsed. 

As Akunin says, this is not just tragic but absurd. One can somehow get used to tragedy. But absurdity? 

[Continuing my series of little posts on winners of the Deutscher Krimi Preis. Peter Zeindler already has an English Wikipedia page, so I have (rather badly) translated a recent news article on him.]

At the center of Peter Zeindler's latest detective story, Die weisse Madonna is once again the retired Secret Service Agent Konrad Sembritzki. Whoever is aware of other novels by Peter Zeindler also knows Sembritzki - he has already been the protagonist of several other spy novels by Zeindler.

Peter Zeindler was born in Zurich in 1934. He studied German, and worked as a journalist, presenter and author of radio and television plays. As a crime writer, he established himself in the 1980s: he wrote of KGB agents in Cold War settings even before genre of crime fiction in Switzerland became a vogue.

The latest case begins on a dull February evening: Konrad Sembritzki gets a mysterious phone call. The caller calls Sembritzki to a secret meeting in Einsiedeln; except that this meeting never happens: the caller is found murdered.

This is where Sembritzki's investigation begins. They lead him to the monastery church in Einsiedeln, a psychiatric clinic at Lake Constance, and from the island of Reichenau to Berlin, and then into far-right circles. This is not a high voltage thriller; rather, it is steeped in an eerie atmosphere. And yet, the reader will want to know how this story will end.

Swiss colour and international flair

Peter Zeindler is one of the most successful crime writers from Switzerland. Central to his success is that, from early on, he wrote spy novels with a Swiss flavour. His novels had from the beginning not only a Swiss atmosphere, but also a lot of international flair. His secret agents were Swiss and much of the action was set behind the Iron Curtain. Zeindler's books appealed as well to a wider readership in German-speaking countries.

(Indeed, Zeindler is the most successful Deutscher Krimi Preis winner, having obtained it four times for Der Zirkel (1986), Widerspiel (1988), Der Schattenagent (1990), and Feuerprobe (1992).)

An anti-hero, not a James Bond

One of the ingredients of Zeindler's success is his deft characterisation. Konrad Sembritzki offers the reader a high degree of identification: unlike, say, James Bond, for whom everything is easy, Sembritzki a very grounded character: a melancholic man, plagued by self-doubt, he suffers in the world, and the women with whom he'd like to succeed want no relationship with him.

For decades, Peter Zeindler has been publishing his masterly books, and they have never diminished in quality. Zeindler has remained Zeindler, an established brand with its own undying fan base. 

(From Schweizer Radio und Fensehen, "Peter Zeindler feiert seinen 80. Geburtstag mit einem neuen Krimi", February 18, 2014.)

[Continuing my series of little biographical posts of the Deutschen Krimi Preis winners, translated from the German Wikipedia.]

Frieder Faist (June 19, 1948 - August 6, 2008) was a German author of crime fiction and a screenwriter.

Faist was born in Augsburg. He served an apprenticeship as an industrial clerk and worked as an administrative officer. Until 1980, he ran a pub in his hometown, where he had lived since his birth.

He was part of a poetic group called Pitz Kinzer, which aimed to rehabilitate drug addicts by means of literature.

Faist wrote a series of crime novels set in Augsburg. He also wrote several radio plays. In 1982 and 1987, he received the Art Prize of Augsburg. In 1985, he won the Deutscher Krimi Preis for his novel Schattenspiele (1984).


And, no surprises here, his books are not available in English translation.


According to a reviewer of one of Faist's novels (Nebenrollen (1986)), Faist wrote in Chandleresque style, brimming with black humour. On the other hand, the reviewer Karl-Heinz Götze said, the humour was not as funny or as entertaining as the author wanted it to be. (Die Zeit, April 10, 1987.)

[Continuing my series of little biographical posts of the Deutscher Krimi Preis winners.]

Werner Waldhoff (1943 - 1997) was a German author and translator. He wrote crime fiction under the pen-name Claude Ericsson.

Waldhoff was born in Breslau. After his high school, he spent a short time in the army, following which he joined the merchant navy and travelled to Africa, America and Southeast Asia. He then started and abandoned higher studies in physics, economics and computer science. In between his studies, he worked as a waiter and a truck driver.

Waldhoff was arrested for criminal activities, including car jacking, and imprisoned for four years. He tried several times to escape from gaol. At the end of his sentence, he began to write short crime stories for popular magazines. He also began his translation work at around the same time.

Waldhoff's works include crime novels, books for children, poetry, screenplays for television dramas. Among his translations (into German) are works by authors such as Paul Theroux, Margaret Atwood, Fay Weldon, and Jack Kerouac.

In an interview he was asked what he'd like as an epitaph. "I want to speak to my lawyer," he said.

He won the Deutscher Krimi Preis in 1985 for his novels Des einen oder des anderen Glück (1983) and Ausbruch (1984).

Waldhoff died in the summer of 1997.

(Translated loosely from the German Wikipedia.)


None of his books appear to have been translated into English.

I created a Wikipedia page for the Deutscher Krimi Preis a while ago. Then I began to wonder - being on my usual hobby-horse these days - if these outstanding German crime novelists were ever published in English. The lack of English Wikipedia pages for the majority of the writers was a partial counter to my hope that I might find their works in translation. So I decided to translate the German Wikipedia pages for the various prize-winning authors. I'm too lazy to create new Wiki pages; instead, I'll put them up here.

*****

Helga Riedel (August 24, 1942 - ) is a German writer, best known for her crime fiction.

She was born in Luckenwalde, Brandenburg. Her father perished at Stalingrad during the Second World War. To come of age, she got married in 1962. Four years later, she moved to Gelsenkirchen, where she began her writing career. Her first works were short stories published in local newspapers. She also wrote some poetry and plays. She was active in the Gelsenkirchen literary workshop (Literarischen Werkstatt Gelsenkirchen), where the crime writer Frank Göhre and Max von der Grün also participated.

In 1969, Riedel moved to Wyk auf Föhr (in the Friesian islands) with her children to be a teacher, having separated from her husband. One time, while hospitalised, she wrote her first crime novel, Einer muß tot, which is the story of a German teacher who marries a Turkish illegal immigrant. The book was published eventually only 14 years later.

Riedel's next novel was Wiedergänger (Revenants) which appeared in 1984. Just like its predecessor, this book was also set in northern Schleswig-Holstein.

Riedel's third novel Ausgesetzt was published in 1985. Set in the Adenauer era, between the years 1959 and 1962, it was written purporting to be a compendium of documents including a report on a teenager whose father loses his life.

That same year, Helga Riedel began her fourth novel Der kleine Tod. She suffered a serious car accident and was in a coma for a long time, which abruptly ended her literary career. There were other tragedies in her life as well - her mother believed that one of the characters in her books was based on her, and broke off contact. Her books disappeared from the shelves for several years; they were republished only in the 2000s.

Riedel was awarded the Deutscher Krimipreis for her first two books in 1985.

Since 1990, Riedel has lived in Itzehoe.

(Translated loosely from the German Wikipedia article.)

*****

It doesn't look like her books have been translated into English.

[Continued from Part II, and loosely translated from A Russian Missionary in India: Archimandrite Andronicus.]

After his departure from the Bethany ashram, Andronicus settled in Pattanapuram at the English school of St Stephen. He was then able to travel as a pastor around Travancore; occasionally, he was invited by Russians living in other parts of India to perform rites in Calcutta, Bangalore and Bombay. He also visited the Portuguese colony of Goa.

In 1939, he was established an Orthodox chapel in the village of Patali, a few miles from Pattanapuram, and began offering services. Next door was a Hindu temple of Bhadrakali. The locals were not pleased that the church was being set up, and complained to the government, which ignored them and permitted the church to continue.

Andronicus, as ecumenical as ever, established cordial relations with the chief priest of the Bhadrakali temple, as well as the local Muslim clergy. (Subsequently, he even attended a series of lectures on Hinduism in Madras, offered in 1948 by Somasundaram Iyer.) In Patali, there were Jacobites as well, whose church Andronicus often visited, and who also came to him during the Holy Week for confession. He was tireless in his works - preached, performed the liturgy at the St Thomas Church, constantly visited the sick. His superiors considered him a prime example of the apostolic man, hard-working and self-sacrificing, courageously undergoing all sorts of hardships and dangers both physical and spiritual, and continuing for years without confession.

Andronicus's superior, the Parisian metropolitan Eulogius, did all he could to publicise among the faithful in the Church. He wrote to the Russian Orthodox flock living in India about Andronicus, praising his steadfastness and urging the Russians to go to him for all their spiritual needs. 'His work is great and difficult,' wrote Eulogius. 'He brought from the Mother Church and lit up in distant India the lamp of the holy Orthodox faith that will not only illuminate the Russian peoples scattered there, but also, possibly, attract the native non-Christian folk and kindle in them a feeling for the Saviour, so that they may exclaim in an incandescence of faith as did St Thomas: My Lord and my God!'

Eulogius concluded his epistle with an exhortation to the Russians to assist father Andronicus in his lonely task. Let not the light of Orthodoxy be extinguished, he wrote, let it shine its saving grace on everything - be it ours or their's, be it near or far.

In 1934, for the first time Andronicus was able to hold a service for a distinctly Russian audience - nearly sixty peasants who had come to India in the previous two years, but who were now getting ready to leave for Brazil. For the first time in three and a half years in India, wrote Andronicus to Eulogius, I was able to serve as in Russia, and offer confession and communion.

In 1937, Andronicus was promoted to the rank of Archimandrite; his investment was performed at the Catholicos' residence, and conducted by the Serbian metropolitan Dosifej who was in India attending an international conference of the YMCA at Mysore.

Andronicus's travels around India continued. In 1944, he served the nearly 80 Russians in Calcutta, and performed office for the local Armenians as well at their cemetery church. There were fewer Russians in Bombay but there was still a need for pastoral care. During a visit to Delhi, Andronicus got acquainted with Nicholas Roerich's assistant, Shibayev, from whom he came learn of the various activities and interests of the great Russian artist, writer and Orientalist, who lived in the Himalayas at the time.

In 1947, Andronicus was invited to teach Russian at the University of Delhi. He had learned over his travels in India that Indians were interested in Russia and the Orthodox faith, although to varying degrees: they were interested in Russian politics and economics, and vaguely so in the faith; indeed, most educated Indians tended to assert that all religions were equal and good. So Andronicus was happy to use the opportunity in Delhi to teach Indian students not only the language, but also (hoping that they would develop deeper interests in) Russian culture and religion.

Following Indian independence and the establishment of diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union, the Russian department at the University expanded considerably. Many students hoped to obtain employment at the Soviet embassy. 

Andronicus stayed in Delhi for over a year, during which he introduced the basics of Orthodoxy to his students. In one of the two rooms he occupied during his stay, he established a little chapel where he offered worship regularly. He then returned to the south, hoping to establish a monastery in the Nilgiris and to continue his monastic life. This did not quite work out, as in 1948, he was invited by bishop John (Shakhovsky) to travel to the United States to continue his pastoral work in the Americas. And so his eighteen-year stay in India came to an end.

He spent two months awaiting his passport and visa in Madras, where he often visited the site of the martyrdom of St Thomas the Apostle. The holy location was situated within a small Catholic nunnery. The Thomas church on the hill held an ancient revered stone cross and an icon of the Mother of God. There was a grand cathedral in Mylapore that Andronicus often went to, built over the tomb of St Thomas. 'These places, of course, remain shrines for all true Christians,' he wrote, 'and the Orthodox faithful from the western coast visit them in awe.'

In 1949, Andronicus travelled by sea to New York. There began a new period in his pastoral work. He also started to write his memoir of his Indian life. To the end of his life, he held India in especial esteem. No matter where I might be, he wrote, I cannot remove India from my heart and from my thoughts. The unification of the churches remained his lifelong occupation and concern.

Andronicus died in 1958. His book Eighteen Years in India was published in the Russian language in Argentina the next year. A review appeared in the Bulletin of the Russian Student Christian Movement, praising his selflessness, elevating him as an outstanding evangelist, talked about the lonely heroism of his mission, and celebrated his memoir a special example in the literature of exile. Others familiar with his work in India pointed out that his mission was essentially a failure, as he had been unable to convert the heathens to the faith, and did not establish his own church community either. The reason, of course, was that the Orthodox church of South India, while not in communion with the Russian Orthodox, was close enough to the latter in faith and spirit. And so after much deliberation, Andronicus concluded he should help the Syrian Orthodox church and not establish a separate congregation. Where Andronicus had established a small church in Patali, a lone Indian monk remained, continuing his work. The surrounding communities remembered the unusual Russian priest with gratitude and hoped he'd return, but it was not to happen.

[Part II of Russian Religious Missions to India, loosely translated excerpts from the original Russian.]

A special place in the history of Russian religious missions to India belongs to the archimandrite Andronicus, who spent eighteen years in India and established close ties with Indian Christians of various denominations. He was born in 1894 to a professor of church history, the seventh of twelve children, and he followed his brothers into the theological seminary of Olonets. Shortly after his graduation from the seminary in 1916, it occurred to him to travel to India. Having read in Eugraph Smirnov's history of the church that there were Christians in South India with rituals related to the Orthodox, he asked himself - why not travel there if they want to join us?

Andronicus took part in the Great War, during which he heard the happy news that he had been admitted to the St Petersburg Theological Academy. Of course, the Revolution intervened, and his studies were disrupted, with the result that he spent a few years in Finland and Germany, before moving to Paris in 1923. Two years later, at the St Sergius Church in Paris, he was tonsured as a monk, and ordained to the priesthood. He was then sent to the Belfort, close to the German frontier, to take over a parish.

He was a somewhat austere soul, reluctant to take money for religious services from his congregation: instead, he rented a house with a large garden where he grew his own food; he also worked at a local Peugeot factory. 

Again he brought up his desire to sojourn in India, a request that was granted by the Metropolitan Eulogius. With the money saved up from his Peugeot job, he travelled on the steamer General Messenger to Ceylon.

En route, he befriended a couple of Indians: one a Brahmin who had graduated from university in England, the other a Muslim Bengali merchant.

From Colombo, Andronicus travelled to India, and settled in Bangalore where he worked in an agricultural factory that employed an old Russian acquaintance of his. S. F. Kirichenko had bought a small estate in South India and taken up farming; unable to concentrate on his new projects, Kirichenko had asked for another worker to replace him, and Andronicus offered to take his place. 

Andronicus worked in Coimbatore as well. In one of the rooms of the factory, he established a little chapel. In those years, there were only around 300 Russian Orthodox Christians in the country, and it was his duty to provide pastoral care to them all. Prior to his arrival, Russian believers had to visit non-Orthodox clergy in times of trouble. One example was that of the Princess Urusova, who wanted to partake of Holy Communion on her deathbed in Bombay, and had to beseech the Anglican bishop who  initially refused, but finally relented. 'You may pretend that you are taking communion from the hands of an Orthodox priest,' he said to the princess, 'I shall get in touch with your bishop and ask him to approve the holy eucharist.' It was clear that there was an urgent need for an Orthodox priest in the country.

In October 1931, Andronicus visited Travancore for three weeks, during which he met Syrian Orthodox Christians. Their denomination had split 22 years earlier from the Syro-Jacobite patriarchate of Syria, and was interested in making peace with the patriarchate, but the latter's demand for complete submission prevented any harmony. After the death of Metropolitan Dionysius VI in 1934, the first Catholicos of the church, a constitution was drawn up at the conference of all the churches in Kottayam that established the independence of the Syrian Orthodox denomination under the leadership of a Catholicos, although it was still spoken of as a subsidiary of the Syrian church. (The issue was resolved only in 1962 with the recognition of the Malabar Syrian church by the Antiochian patriarch Ignatius-Jacob III.)

In Travancore, Andronicus visited the Catholicos Basil-Gregorius and had a conversation with him. He also visited the local seminary, sharing meals with the priests, teachers and students, followed by theological discussions. Subsequently, in Kottayam, Andronicus stayed with the Catholicos, and was thereafter always assured of the most welcoming hospitality. He established close links with the clergy and bishops of the Syrian Church of South India. In their conversations, Andronicus was quick to indicate the prominent drawback of the isolation of the Syrian church from the universal church, but was comforted by the desire for unification with the universal church through their links with the Russian Orthodox church.

In Kottayam, Andronicus was also able to meet the Jacobite patriarch Ilia, whose visit from Syria was an all too rare event for the local Christians. Ilia recalled the deep faith of the Russian Christians in Jerusalem and sang their praises. Andronicus then visited the Syro-Jacobite Metropolitan Athanasios in Alwaye; staying at his residence, he had the opportunity to speak with the clergy and seminarians.

Andronicus met the bishops of the Mar Thoma denomination, which was at the time headed by the Metropolitan Titus, and comprised a hundred thousand worshippers and a hundred churches. This church was allied with the Protestants, he discovered: among other things, it did not recognise saints. Rounding off his visits with the metropolitan Dionysius in Kunnamkullam, he was happy to inform his superiors back in Paris that he had met the heads of all the denominations of the Syrian church in South India that were of interest to the Russian Orthodox.

In 1932, Andronicus joined the monastery of Bethany ashram (near Vadasserikara) to study the religious life of Christians in India. He paid great attention to the missionary activities of St Thomas the Apostle in South India, the Nestorian movement and so on.

In particular, he was interested in the propagation of the Roman Catholic faith in India. He learned of St Francis Xavier, who had begun his mission in Goa, converting the locals, then moving on to Travancore, and Madras. Returning from Japan in 1562 to Goa, this energetic missionary then headed to China where he perished of malaria. He is interred in a magnificent tomb in Goa, and is considered the patron saint of India, reported Andronicus.

Andronicus noted that the Catholics had been very active in the previous decades in all parts of India, establishing great churches in Madras, Bangalore, Calcutta, Delhi, in the Nilgiris, all over Malabar, and in Goa; everywhere, there were crowds of pilgrims; one would hear of their bishops, their monasteries and nunneries. Their resources were tremendous, he said, they acquired land and buildings; in a pagan country, their presence was a cultural boost.

His greatest interest remained towards the Syrian Orthodox. He wrote of its doctrines, governance, peculiarities of ritual, the sacraments, the tradition of iconography, the church hierarchy and so on.

At the Bethany ashram, he was permitted to perform the orthodox liturgy, and even after his sojourn ended, he often visited the monks, whom he considered close friends. In his missives to Paris, he wrote detailed accounts of the monastery. He said that the Jacobite monastic charter was quite distinct from the Russian Orthodox: not as austere, no long services, no vows at tonsure, and no use of the Jesus Prayer; prayer and obedience were not the essence of monastic life; common prayers were frequent but brief; on the other hand, institutionalised hours among the Jacobites for meditation and silence were better defined.

[To be continued…]

The wife's been reading a biography of W.C. Fields (W.C. Fields: His Follies and Fortunes, by Robert Lewis Taylor). It was first published in 1950 - the hardcover copy we have is from the library, and it's been in the library so long that it was put away into the archival shelves aeons ago. A look through the borrowing dates shows that it was first taken out in May 1953, and then about once a month till October 1954, after which the frequency dropped to once in two months or so till mid-1956. Then the borrowings fell even more to about once or twice a year, and there was a long pause where it gathered dust between 1969 and February 1972, the last year stamped on the borrowing slip.

1972! The wife wasn't even born then. She was very excited to be holding a book that was so old. Plus it had the smell of old books that we love so much. We took turns taking deep whiffs. Then I saw the sign on the borrowing slip that reads as follows:

ENQUIRIES ARE WELCOME