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  • Lügen von gestern und heute by Ursula Fricker
  • Albrecht Classen
Ursula Fricker. Lügen von gestern und heute. Munich: Verlagsgesellschaft, 2016, 363p.

Swiss author Ursula Fricker's fourth novel, Lügen von gestern und heute ("Lies from Yesterday and Today") follows Fliehende Wasser (2004), Das letzte Bild (2009) and Außer sich (2012). The present novel reflects deeply on the modern refugee crisis and focuses on three major figures—Beba, Otten, and Isa—who enter relationships with each other, apparently in some major German city. First, there is Beba, who might have originated from one of the Balkan countries. She works as a prostitute but really loves music and develops a considerable skill in the course of time, although she refuses to learn how to read notes. This artistic ability connects her with a politician, Otten, who is intrigued by her piano playing in a jazz bar and who heads the interior department as "Innensenator," is responsible for social, economic, and security issues; hence the novel must take place in one of the three German city states with such an officer: Bremen, Hamburg, or Berlin. Beba often reflects on her memories from a war-torn country, which could be Croatia, Bosnia, or the Kosovo, though the specifics do not matter here. The novelist instead conveys the misery and suffering which refugees have to go through, first back home, then in their new home country, where they have to struggle hard to gain economic stability and to overcome the war trauma.

Finally, there is the student Isa who pursues highly idealistic goals and wants to drop out of traditional society, so she joins a leftist terror group, but soon finds herself deeply disappointed after all. Yet, tragically, at the end she assassinates the Senator as a punishment for his decision to expel all refugees from their camp in the factory, which does not, however, solve any issue. Since she belongs to the upper social class and there is no good evidence connecting her with the murder, the police finally refuse to charge her with the deed, which serves as a final catalyst to underscore the author's criticism of the ruling system. Similarly, the politician at first operates harshly against the refugees, but he then remembers his own early years as a radical leftist revolutionary and is about to step down when Isa murders him. This assassination thus proves to be entirely meaningless, being the result of yet another lie. [End Page 67]

The novel succeeds in conveying the interior and exterior lives of these three protagonists, and makes it possible to recognize how they perceive their own social environment. Often it is not easy to follow their thought patterns, to identify what is going on at specific times, or to distinguish among the various figures and their group context. However, this difficulty might be the very strength of this novel, demonstrating how these three lives are interlaced with each other, and how much the suffering of the refugees who are housed in an empty factory impacts the lives of ordinary people. The terrorist group pretends to be constructive and revolutionary, but realizes soon that they have nothing really to offer, so they fall apart.

The fact that Beba earns her money as a prostitute is brought to full daylight when Otten invites her to his house and when she is later asked to perform for a group of his guests. But she falls in love with a young man and becomes pregnant, both of which make it impossible for her to continue selling her body. The theme of music matters deeply insofar as it connects Beba with her childhood back home and with her new existence in Germany. Fricker systematically probes how traditional society reacts to external challenges, both by the terrorist group and the refugees, and then also by the dissatisfied student. Beba's work as a prostitute also shocks the establishment, but this never undermines her existence, especially because she finally terminates that job. Not much really changes, and the book's title might convey this quite well, since the lies from yesterday continue to today.

Overall, this is a well-written novel, compact, though...

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