eros

Eros is perhaps what Alexander von Brücken feels about Sofie as he tells his life story to a young writer, as he lay dying, in his mansion outside Berlin. 

Obsession is a better word. Or maybe stalker is more apt.  

Von Brücken tells his story, beginning with his childhood, as the son of a wealthy manufacturer during World War II. VB wants a record of his love after he is gone, to insure that it is 'real.' Proof that it really happened; that the story survives him even if nothing else does.  

What the young author hears over his 8 day stay with this reclusive, eccentric billionaire is a history of joy, loss, yearning, love, sickness, politics, war, revolution, obsession, and death. Each day VB gets sicker, even as the workmen build his tomb in the garden outside the mansion, working day and night to complete it before the old man dies.   

It's a detailed look into what a man will do for love. How he can let it consume him, grind him down. VB seems to punish himself with it. It's also a story about how personal wealth and influence can be used (and abused) to accomplish things that most people can't. All this overlaid on the tapestry of WWII and it's aftermath in Germany.   

I read translations to get a different perspective than I normally do with American (and other English language) writing. And in that regard, this book didn't fail me. It was, however a little slow and tedious. Not least because if the fabricated VB weren't a very wealthy man, no one would hear his story. And regardless of his wealth making it available, no one really cares. Perhaps that is also one of Herr Helmut Krausser's points. 

Translation by Mike Mitchell.