Novel
Two Views
Zwei Ansichten
Uwe Johnson · 1965
Synopsis
In January 1961, B., a young press photographer from a small town in Holstein, and D., an East Berlin nurse in her twenties, met in Berlin and began an affair. In August, B. leaves for Berlin in the sports car he has just bought, to photograph the wall going up and to see D. again; the closed border separates them. The chapters move from one to the other: he, back in the West, forms an image of her; she, in the East, weighs what holds her back and what might make her leave.
Context
The novel appeared in 1965 from Suhrkamp. In ten chapters, five for each, it follows two characters who almost never meet, from January 1961 to the beginning of the following year. Johnson keeps here his writing habits, dialogue without quotation marks, coined words, administrative jargon, but narrates in a more linear way than in his earlier books. The book was translated into English by Richard and Clara Winston, and into French by Gabrielle Wittkop-Ménardeau for Gallimard in 1968.
Who it is for
A short novel whose chapters pass from one character to another, in a language that mixes colloquial speech and administrative terms.
Prizes and reception
Its subject, the lives of people in a divided Germany, earned Johnson's work the praise of critics, who were more divided over his linguistic boldness.