The Defector

by Monika Maron, David Newton Marinelli

The Defector concerns Rosalind, a historian who discovers that her body will not take her to work. Rosalind's "defection" from society is physical, emotional, political and spiritual. Marons courage lies in her will to see and to purge the materialism, the conformism and the emotional timidity that impede her heroine's voyage tot he limits of freedom. (Readers International)

150 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

Monika Maron is a German author, formerly of the German Democratic Republic. She moved in 1951 from West to East Berlin with her stepfather, Karl Maron, the GDR Minister of the Interior.

She studied theatre and spent time as a directing assistant and as a journalist. In the late 1970s, she began writing full-time in East Berlin. In her early novels written in East Berlin, her primary theme was life and loathing inside a totalitarian surveillance state. But despite Maron's criticism of the GDR regime, it turned out that she had worked as an informer for the Ministry of State Security, or Stasi — a fact that she addressed in her 1999 novel, Pawels Briefe (Pawel's Letters).

She left the GDR in 1988 with a three-year visa. After living in Hamburg, Germany, until 1992, she returned to a reunited Berlin, where she currently lives and writes.

Her works deal to a large degree with confrontation with the past and explore the threats posed both by memory and isolation. Her prose is sparse, bleak, and lonely, conveying the sensitivity and desperation of her narrators.

In 1992, she was distinguished with the renowned Kleist Prize, awarded annually to prominent German authors, and, in 2003, with the Friedrich Hölderlin Prize.

Her latest novel, Artur Lanz (2020), delves into the emasculation of men as "heroes," and the evolution of "cancel culture" in a liberal mainstream that polices speech and opinions. Maron's characters' views on gender, immigration and Islam made some wonder if the once leftist writer had become Islamophobic or anti-feminist. Maron has also railed against the "gender gibberish" of woke liberals in political essays. She has criticized an "unenlightened Islam" and warned against "tolerance in the face of intolerance." Her political rhetoric echoes the far-right AFD party. Is the opinionated author turning herself into a mouthpiece for the alt right?

"I say what I think," she explained in an interview with public broadcaster Deutschlandfunk. "I arrive at my convictions or opinions by looking at the world or reading about it, or by weighing one opinion against another and somehow orienting myself. Whether that's right-wing or not doesn't matter to me in the end."

Reviews

[Jin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wir hören der Lebensgeschichte einer Frau zu, die gefangen ist und intensiv mit sich selbst beschäftigt. Es geht nicht nur um ihr Dasein als Frau, Tochter und Freundin, sondern auch um ihr Umfeld und den anderen, die sie umgibt. Dabei folgt die Erzählung keine lineare Zeit und lässt den Leser allein bei der Suche danach, was Wahrheit oder Fantasie ist.
Im Großen und Ganzen fand ich es klasse erzählt, auch wenn die Geschichte selbst keine wirkliche Handlung hat. Das meiste passiert tatsächlich eher im Kopf der Protagonistin, es gibt kein Action oder ein Twist. Trotzdem war es interessant ihren Gedanken zu folgen. Zum Ende hin fand ich es leider etwas mühselig, weil ich nicht sehen konnte, wo das Ganze enden soll. Daher kam mir das Buch auch länger vor als es eigentlich ist.
Fans von Monika Maron und ihrer Erzählsprache werden hier sicherlich Spaß haben, anderen könnte das Buch allerdings auch langweilen. Das Buch bekommt 3,5 Sterne auf 4 hochgerundet.

** Dieses Buch wurde mir über NetGalley als E-Book zur Verfügung gestellt **

[Maia · Rating 4 out of 5]

very different, as i remember. Read it as samizdat smuggled to the west and published

[Annett · Rating 2 out of 5]

Monika Maron beschreibt die Fantasiewelt von Rosalind Polkowski, die durch Tagträume und Fantasievorstellungen versucht, der Realität ihrer plötzlich gelähmten Beine zu entfliehen. Die lässt bekannte und unbekannte Personen in ihrem Wohnzimmer erscheinen oder flieht aus der Wohnung in die Strassen Berlins, um so Situationen und Beziehungen aufzuarbeiten, die sie aus der Vergangenheit mit sich herumschleppt.

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

A woman from East Germany uses her imagination in ways not approved of by the government. Who are the brain police? Usually ourselves, if the State suppression apparatus works correctly. What really happens, who is this really about? Without State permission, the questions hardly matter.

Written by a person with three strikes against her, according to the society she lived in: journalist, feminist, free-thinker. And a fourth strike for good measure: woman.

[Kate]

Professor Irene Kacandes taught this in the trauma class that Cori took.

[Ron Christiansen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read in Bach's "The Wall" English course--best course I've ever had.