What do you think?
Rate this book
Levin's Mill
Johannes Bobrowski (1917-1965) is known as one of Germany’s greatest writers. His first novel, set in a West Prussian village in 1874, tells the story of the narrator’s grandfather, who plots and schemes to ruin the Jewish newcomer who has built a mill downstream from him. With splendid irony, Bobrowski describes the diverse characters of the Jews, Poles, Gypsies, and Germans who inhabit the village, and whose affairs mirror the larger history of Poland. As The Irish Times says, “Bobrowski has a marvelous ability to evoke the countryside and a vanished way of life… throughout the entire book there is a keen though understated element of humour, as well as a compelling, dream-like sense of fantasy.”
- GenresGermany
230 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1964
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
November 19, 2023
Auf die Frage, warum die Deutschen von ihren östlichen Nachbarn
nichs wissen wollen, kann uns dieser Roman auch keine Antwort geben.
Er liefert uns nur einen weiteren Beweis.
nichs wissen wollen, kann uns dieser Roman auch keine Antwort geben.
Er liefert uns nur einen weiteren Beweis.
September 21, 2018
"There are people and people."
You know you've found something wonderful when there are exactly 0 reviews on Goodreads.
Seriously though, having discovered Bobrowski through his wonderful poetry and one of his other short novels and thus discovered that he is wonderful, I naturally moved on to this, one of the only other works of his in translation.
Bobrowski is one of those singular, peculiar writers, like Flann O'Brien or Meir Shalev, who are simply unclassifiable. They are nothing like anything else, which makes straightforward "reviewing" nigh impossible.
What could I say to make you read this? Tell you the plot? It's about a bastard asshole who sabotages his Jewish neighbor's mill and tries to set up a kind of 1870s German mini-nation in his village in what is now Poland. The style? No indentation, minimal punctuation, voices flood together.
It is so much more than the sum of its parts, though, however you want to pull that apart. Books like this shouldn't be pulled apart, though. They're books, not sausage links.
You know you've found something wonderful when there are exactly 0 reviews on Goodreads.
Seriously though, having discovered Bobrowski through his wonderful poetry and one of his other short novels and thus discovered that he is wonderful, I naturally moved on to this, one of the only other works of his in translation.
Bobrowski is one of those singular, peculiar writers, like Flann O'Brien or Meir Shalev, who are simply unclassifiable. They are nothing like anything else, which makes straightforward "reviewing" nigh impossible.
What could I say to make you read this? Tell you the plot? It's about a bastard asshole who sabotages his Jewish neighbor's mill and tries to set up a kind of 1870s German mini-nation in his village in what is now Poland. The style? No indentation, minimal punctuation, voices flood together.
It is so much more than the sum of its parts, though, however you want to pull that apart. Books like this shouldn't be pulled apart, though. They're books, not sausage links.
February 4, 2023
I read this about ten years ago and enjoyed it. As an American that has never been in this area, it's sort of hard to understand completely, but I got the gist of it.
I remember that a lot of people with German names were Polish and visa versa.
The relationship between the different ethnic groups was interesting. I bought surplus valves from gypsies for about ten years, so I had come to understand them a little. Their traveling circus plays a pretty big part in the book.
The Jew and Gentile dynamic is interesting too, and it's a shame that in a generation or two that this delicate balance was crushed. The author was a poet from East Germany that lived under Communism, so he knew about crushed cultures.
I think that his grandfather represented the traditionalist culture and Levin the up and coming business culture.
My Dads Mom came from western Lithuania in 1914 at age two and was absorbed into her new culture with little to no trace of the old country carried forward. I enjoyed getting a taste of this world in this book.
I remember that a lot of people with German names were Polish and visa versa.
The relationship between the different ethnic groups was interesting. I bought surplus valves from gypsies for about ten years, so I had come to understand them a little. Their traveling circus plays a pretty big part in the book.
The Jew and Gentile dynamic is interesting too, and it's a shame that in a generation or two that this delicate balance was crushed. The author was a poet from East Germany that lived under Communism, so he knew about crushed cultures.
I think that his grandfather represented the traditionalist culture and Levin the up and coming business culture.
My Dads Mom came from western Lithuania in 1914 at age two and was absorbed into her new culture with little to no trace of the old country carried forward. I enjoyed getting a taste of this world in this book.
September 14, 2021
It is about poland, couldn't understand some of the words about landscape and about Gypsies.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews