“The Wall Jumper” by Peter Schneider (Germany)

Favourite Quote

Every story lacks something that the next one has; but then the next story is missing something from the one before. Maybe the story I’m looking for doesn’t exist.

Synopsis

Berlin before the fall of the Wall is a city divided, yet its ordinary residents find ways to live and survive on both sides. There is Robert, teller of barroom anecdotes over beer and vodka, adjusting to a new life in the west; Pommerer, trying to outwit the system in the east; the unnamed narrator, who ‘escapes’ back-and-forth to collect stories; his beguiling, exiled lover Lena; the three boys who defect to watch Hollywood films; and the man who leaps across the Wall again and again – simply because he cannot help himself.

All are, in their different ways, wall jumpers, trying to lose themselves but still trapped wherever they go. Ultimately, the walls inside their heads prove to be more powerful than any man-made barrier.

Nicola’s Creative Reading Group reading list

Year 5 – “Western Europe” (Oct 2010 – Jun 2011)

“The True Deceiver” by Tove Jansson (Finland/Sweden)
“The Withered Root” by Rhys Davies (U.K.-Wales)
“Loving Sabotage” by Amélie Nothomb (Belgium)
“The Following Story” by Cees Nooteboom (Netherlands)
“The Wall Jumper” by Peter Schneider (Germany)
“Women as Lovers” by Elfriede Jelinek (Austria)
“A Heart so White” by Javier Marias (Spain)
“If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller” by Italo Calvino (Italy)
“Zorba the Greek” by Nikos Kazantzakis (Greece)