[Dyslermergerb]

Anna Katharina Hahn is a young writer, born in 1970, who has published two volumes of stories before putting out this novel which, like Jhumpa Lahiri?s debut novel The Namesake, bears the traces of a mind trained on writing in the short form, but it?s most successful in the last third where Hahn pulls together all the threads of the book to make, no, to force it to cohere. K?rzere Tage (Shorter Days) is a bleak book, a dark book that finds hope in the end, but it?s a hope born of death and destruction, a hope for something different, better, new, a hope that is fed by the utter hopelessness of the present and the past. There has to be something better in the future, in other countries, doesn?t it? And even this is a hope that is only available to a few of the book?s miserable characters. It is one of Hahn?s strengths that she can make this dark and utter misery into a light enough read, that she uses a language that does not reflect the pain and desperation it depicts. That may be one of the reasons why some people don?t like to read writers such as Jirgl, whose dark subject matter finds expression in a language that is just as dark and violent. That makes for an amazing, convincing reading experience, but it?s also taxing. K?rzere Tage, in contrast, isn?t. Kaputtgart: Anna Katharina Hahn’s “K?rzere Tage” shigekuni.