871. The Invention of Curried Sausage

The Invention of Curried Sausage
Uwe Timm
1993
Around 220 pages

I love a good theme, and it just seems wrong to not experience this book with a plate of curried sausage and a mug of German beer. But I'm a vegetarian, and I hate the taste of beer, so that's another fun idea that I've booed out of the room. Invite me to your parties please.

And speaking of parties we don't want to go to, we basically start our story on the day of Hitler's wedding to Eva Braun. The novel contains a frame narrative, which is that our narrator asks Lena, the inventor of curried sausage, how she invented it, and she starts her story on April 29, 1945. So this is the story of how the sausage gets made...sorry, I couldn't resist.

There have been a lot of World War I/II novels lately. It's strange how our cultures process these stationary events in cycles. The frame of this story is very effective, as our unnamed journalist is obsessed with finding this recipe he had when he was a kid. I think we all have that dish that can take us back to our childhood, for better or for worse, and that longing to go back is universal. 

I didn't really enjoy the turns this story takes, although it was an interesting to look at the immediate aftermath of the ceasefire, and to start your story someplace where others usually end it. But otherwise tasted pretty bland.

RATING: ***--

Interesting Facts:

Adapted to film in 2008.

UP NEXT: Disappearance by David Dabydeen