Aus den Geleisen: Roman

by Inge Merkel

German

279 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 1994

Reviews

[Dennis McCort · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ein wunderbarer Roman, der sich mit der Frage der kulturellen Differenz tief befasst.

[Manuel Espinoza Proudinat · Rating 4 out of 5]

No one knows Inge Merkel. An Austrian philologist that began to write at her sixties and delivered an intricate series of novels whose collective theme is European culture. And there's nothing more gratuitous and, being honest, unnecessary at this moment than European culture. But, reading some outline renderings of her novels, something hinted at, if not great, at least valuable literature. I picked Aus den Geleisen to get a first glimpse, mainly because it treats that relation between Mexico and Austria which has acted simultaneously as fascination and as colonial humiliation when it is written from the European side, but Merkel delivered, though based as expected on very Western cultural principles, something honest, intelligent and strangely non-biased: interculturality isn't possible. She develops an entire novel on the premise of the almost spontaneous trip of Julia Quaerens, an Austrian academic and writer, to Mexico, and the novel whips self-critic at European cultural prejudices, racism, and colonial mentality from beginning to end, and not in a simplistic way. The whiteness of the narrative voice surfaces at times (every time someone dances, either salsa or a Mexica ritual dance, it is described as a "trance") and the psychology of the characters are generally shallow because they're seen as abstractions, but overall, and especially what concerns the use of German (Merkel's style is, as often in Austrian literature, at the same time demanding and greatly rewarding), this novel is a rather unknown jewel of the 90's.