"The Topic Looks For Me"
Luchterhand author Saša Stanišić on his new work "Vor dem Fest"
Saša Stanišić is considered a rising star in the German literary scene and has won several major awards. He was recently awarded the Leipzig Book Fair Prize in the "Fiction" category for his novel "Vor dem Fest" (Before the Festival). Remarkably, the book is only Stanišić’s second work.
Luchterhand author Saša Stanišić spent four years writing his new novel and a full eight years have passed since his debut novel "How the Soldier Repaired the Gramophone" was published. "I don’t look for a topic, the topic looks for me," he says, laughing as he adds that he also just writes very slowly. In general, he is very honest and down to earth, doesn’t have an attitude, and doesn’t act like someone whose novel has earned good reviews from just about every critic. This may also be because Stanišić has a very clear idea of his work and his role: "I’m a writer for a certain period of time, but I also have a life besides writing, a life that I like very much."
In "Vor dem Fest" Stanišić tells of the night before a festival in the village of Fürstenfelde in the Uckermark region of northeastern Germany. The village is a fictional place. "I had a very detailed picture of what the village should look like," says the 35-year-old. Eventually he found the village and slowly started to familiarize himself with the place and the people. "That wasn’t always easy. As soon as people heard that I wanted to write a book set in the Uckermark, they thought I wanted to write about the GDR or Nazis." In fact it is a coincidence that the GDR is a theme in "Vor dem Fest." "It's only because Fürstenfelde is in the Uckermark, but it could just as well have been in Bavaria."
At some point, however, the locals did get talking to Stanišić. The characters in his book owe their specific traits to these conversations. For example, there is Herr Schramm, a former NVA Oberleutnant, then forest ranger, who is now retired and works part-time in an engineering works. Or Frau Kranz, a passionate painter whose oil paintings have recorded the history of the city for many years. Stanišić says she was the one who made him realize that the subject of flight and refugees refuses to let go of him. Born in 1976 in Visegrád, Bosnia, he had to flee to Germany with his parents during the Bosnian war when he was just a boy. Today Stanišić travels to Bosnia about once a year. Asked whether he feels a great longing for his home country, he replies: "I know that for many nostalgia for the past grows with age, but not for me. I like being in Bosnia, but that’s mainly because of the people I meet, and less because of the country itself."
In Bosnia, he says, he for the first time took an intensive look at structural problems and the increasing drain of young people. "In my hometown there is high unemployment, entire regions are aging, and the youth goes away." These problems worry him, so he decided to tackle them.
In his debut novel "How the Soldier Repaired the Gramophone “Stanišić deals with being a refugee, life in a hitherto unknown country and the war in Yugoslavia. It tells the story of young Aleksandar, who flees the civil war in Bosnia with his parents to Germany, and describes his first impressions of the new country as well as various, sometimes bizarre events in his hometown of Visegrád. The book was a huge success, winning awards including the Adelbert von Chamisso Prize, and has been translated into more than 30 languages. The parallels with the author’s own biography are obvious. Asked whether he has spoken much with his parents about his childhood as a refugee Stanišić replies somewhat thoughtfully: "No, actually, the topic only became a subject when I started researching the book. I think before that, we simply had no language to talk about it."
Saša Stanišić has now obviously found a language - and a quite wonderful one. "A novel as rousing as choral singing in prose," said the Leipzig Book Prize jury announcing its decision. Hörverlag has now also published the audiobook of "Vor dem Fest," read by the author himself. "What a storyteller, but also: what a reader!" says Deutschlandradio Kultur. Stanišić is pleased with all the praise, and about winning the prestigious Leipzig Book Fair Prize. In his acceptance speech he said the €15,000 prize money gave him security to continue to write, "It frees me up from thinking about bread-and-butter jobs."
