Detlev’s Imitations     by Hubert Fichte, Translated by M Chalmers Original title: Detlevs Imitationen Original language: German Published by Serpent's Tail Publishing Ltd Pub. Date: 1992 Format: Paperback Dimensions: (in inches): 0.73 x 7.80 x 4.99 ISBN: 1852421673 List Price: $14.99, £8.99 Buy online from Amazon.co.uk for £8.99 Buy online from Amazon.com for $14.99 Published by Serpent's Tail Pub. Date: 1992 Format: Paperback List Price: £8.99 Not available for ordering

In narrated time, one night divides Detlev’s Imitations from The Orphanage. For Fichte, the two works were separated by the popular success of his ‘beat’ novel Die Palette, in which a seedy Hamburg bar is seen through the eyes of a bisexual art critic called Jäcki. Detlev’s Imitations juxtaposes the main characters of the two previous novels, and hence the dates 1943 and 1968, the fire bombing of Hamburg and the student revolt. It is the opposite of an anniversary: it is an attempt to come to terms with the past.

Such attempts are very common in postwar German literature. But this one is as subtle, tightly structured and as fiercely intelligent as any, and it goes a good deal further than most. As in The Orphanage, Fichte here insists that structures of persecution are everywhere, underlying not only the infamous anti-gay legislation which the Federal Republic took over from the Nazis, not only the humdrum cruelty, hypocrisy and power-play of everyday life (and everyday speech), not only the whole fraught business of education, especially sex education — but also such apparently harmless or even edifying branches of learning as natural science, history, poetry, philosophy.

Inspired by his psychedelic experiences in the gay bars of Hamburg and his intimate knowledge of European mannerism, Fichte is concerned to suggest alternatives to all polarized and polarizing systems of thought. At the same time, the novel tells a familiar story of unrequited sexual obsession, examines in detail a problematical mother-son relationship, and constitutes an act of mourning. And repeatedly, in various forms, it asks the question which is a touchstone for the consciences of protagonists and readers alike: would you torture?

As well as doing all these deep things, though, Detlev’s Imitations is a wonderfully sardonic evocation of the postwar period in Germany. The over-earnest mimicry of a naïve but precocious child exposes the speech and behaviour of the adults in all its preposterous absurdity. Jäcki, though older and altogether more knowing than his younger imitator, continues the same attack on different levels — by parodying Wittgenstein, for example. And his observation is every bit as sharp and merciless as that of his counterpart. The result is a novel which is by turns both extremely accessible, and inexhaustibly rich: a tour de force which will make you laugh and cry in (almost) equal measure.

‘There’s been an assassination attempt on our Führer, shouts granny. It’s been announced on the radio. I almost got a heart attack.

The people’s radio.

Detlev used to believe that dwarves live, fiddle and sing, inside the black igelite box. He looked in by the side of the dial to see them working.

Zarah Leander sings out of the box.

The Führer’s friend, says grandad.

She sings like a bear.

Zarah, the vodka queen, at whose feet the devil’s general, O.E. Hasse, sits in 1968 at the premiere in the Operetta House.

The whole scene is there and admires the queens from all over the world in their brightly coloured coats.

Zarah in 1943 out of the people’s radio.

Now out of the people’s radio the attempt on our leader’s life. Granny says it again and again, to all the neighbours.

I almost got a heart attack.

But for Detlev something’s missing.

She could say: With fright. Because I’m shocked. Because I don’t know, what will become of our nation and the movement.

Granny says—I almost got a heart attack!

The neighbours want to calm her:

But nothing happened to him.

And granny says nothing.