The Others
East Germany, 1989: Armando is a factory worker from Mozambique, Lolita a medical student from Kerala in India. On a trip to an empty beach with Armando’s small daughter (whose mother is German), they find a drowned young man and surmise that he had probably been trying to reach Denmark. The discovery, because it was made by them and not by border police, sets off a chain of unwanted events, bringing Armando to the attention of the Stasi, the régime’s secret police.
This book is not a thriller, however, but a love story of almost unbearable tenderness, in the cold climate of a country it is nearly impossible to escape from. But Die Wende, the turning-point, is imminent, hinted at first in the de-electrification of a border fence. This leads ultimately to German reunification, but with it comes uncertainty for Armando, who with his fellow workers lives in the country only thanks to a scheme of the old régime.
Lolita is also wooed by an idealistic young German, a garage mechanic from a family of intellectuals, whose academic career has been thwarted by his refusal to work for the Stasi but who nurtures an ambition to be a writer. These two young men resent each other’s presence but not from dislike. The title might be a tribute to Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s landmark film from 2006, The Life of Others, but the others in this case are those thousands brought from countries that had only recently emerged from colonial dominance to work for another empire, that of the Soviet bloc, where they meet with both kindness (from Armando’s enlightened factory manager) and scorn.
Beautifully, wistfully written, The Others is an unconditional recommend.
