Siblings

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‘Spare, chilling, with wild flashes of vivid colour and the tempo of a thriller, Siblings jolts us into the beating heart of a family and post-war East Germany, conjuring the political dreams and divisions that make and ultimately break both’ Lisa Appignanesi

1960. The border between East and West Germany has closed.

For Elisabeth – a young painter – the GDR is her generation’s chance to build a glorious, egalitarian socialist future. For her brother Uli, it is a place of stricture and oppression. Separating them is the ever-wider chasm of the Party line; over them loom the twin spectres of opportunity and fear, and the shadow of their defector brother Konrad. In prose as bold as a scarlet paint stroke, Brigitte Reimann battles with the clash of idealism and suppression, familial loyalty, and desire. The result is this ground-breaking classic of post-war East German literature.

Translated by Lucy JonesAtmopsheric… complex, prickly, funny… Reimann’s novel has the tense mood of a play – a family drama by Henrik Ibsen or Arthur Miller – with plenty of fiery dialogue between the characters about politics, industry and art… [Reimann] is a flash of colour in a grey landscape—Johanna Thomas-Corr, The Sunday Times

A groundbreaking classic of GDR literature… a phenomenon—Kate Connolly, Guardian

Siblings is sexy, rigorous and worrying – I absolutely loved this book—Julia Armfield, author, Our Wives Under the Sea

Intoxicating… dense, jagged… Lucy Jones’s translation excellently captures the dry wit, expressionistic boldness and seductively odd rhythms that make the original German so charismatic—Alexander Wells, Guardian

It is hard to believe that this brilliant novel has taken so many years to find its way into English translation. Spare, chilling, with wild flashes of vivid colour and the tempo of a thriller, Siblings jolts us into the beating heart of a family and post-war East Germany, conjuring the political dreams and divisions that make and ultimately break both—Lisa Appignanesi

Reimann’s depiction of the complexities of nationhood are remarkably modern, and her portrayal of the sibling bond unnerving and tender… A striking portrait of what it feels like to be young, idealistic and crushed by the systems around you—New Statesman

Short, artful… Although Siblings is decidedly a realist novel, some moments feel more modernist […] Indeed, one of the most intriguing subplots concerns her engagement with what it means to make realist art – a mission complicated by sexism in the party’s ranks… Vivid—Franklin Nelson, Financial Times

[Lucy] Jones’s translation ably captures the frankness of Elisabeth’s voice: the fast transitions, sensual visual imagery and careful ironic distance. At its best the prose evokes a kind of flickering street photography… Siblings is too good a novel to be read merely for the way in which it reflects on the limited political horizons of our era; but if you are looking to imagine your way beyond them, it gestures to a picture of a future that never was—Kevin Brazil, TLS

This vivid and intriguing novel, published in 1963, is a largely autobiographical story by an author who had a short, eventful life, marrying four times and declaring her intent to live “30 wild years instead of 70 well-behaved ones”… Siblings is given new life in this translation by Lucy Jones—John Self, Observer

Like a book from a lost civilisation… Siblings is a generational book. Like Gen X-ers or Gen Z-ers, Reimann looked about her to see that the markers of life and society had been put in place by people alien to her… An almost cool, static, geometrical spider’s web of a book—Michael Hofmann, LRB

She made our hearts beat. She showed women both in the east and the west how to live. In short she was one of the coolest chicks in town—Carolin Würfel, author, Three Women Who Dreamed of SocialismBrigitte Reimann (1933-1973) was among East Germany’s most significant writers. Like her heroines, she was spirited and outspoken, addressing issues and sensibilities otherwise repressed in the GDR. She believed passion­ately in socialism, yet never joined the party; stayed with her second husband, yet pursued a series of affairs. Her stated aim was to live ‘thirty wild years instead of seventy well-behaved ones’. In 1960, her brother left for the West and she began writing Siblings. She died from cancer at the age of thirty-nine, a celebrated writer and cult figure.

Lucy Jones is a literary translator who lives in Berlin. She has translated the works of Anke Stelling, Theresia Enzensberger and Silke Scheuermann, among others. Her own writing has been published in Litro magazine, SAND journal, Pigeon Pages and 3am magazine.GB

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