Alles Gute zum Geburtstag, Jakov Lind

We have a special birthday to celebrate today. Jakov Lind, lauded as one of the greatest contemporary German writers during his day, would be 82 today. In German-speaking lands he's right up there with Günther Grass and Thomas Bernhard as one of the best of the best. However, nowadays this great writer has drifted to become an international unknown, as his German pieces are virtually unavailable in English-speaking countries. (Thank goodness for Open Letter! They will be publishing a paperback translation of his Landscape in Concrete next month).

Jakov Lind, the name inscribed below these great works of fiction, lived a fascinating life of many names and languages. He was born to an Austrian-Jewish family as Heinz Landwirth, but escaped to the Netherlands in 1938 and took on the name Jan Gerrit Overbeek. He actually spent most of the war in Germany, hiding in full view as a Dutch laborer. After the war, he became Jakov Chaklan and lived briefly in Palestine. Returning to Vienna and finding his birth-city still overrun with Nazis, the man instead went to London and there began to write at last. Though many of his works are in German, he struggled greatly with his mother tongue, considering it a murderer's language. Later he mastered English and published works in this his fourth language; thus he is sometimes considered a British writer.

His writing style reflects his tumultuous, wandering life. Often compared to Kafka, Lind successfully pulls the reader into a wild and crazy adventure, but you can never quite trust his narration, his characters' biased perspectives, or know what is truly going on. In Landscape in Concrete, there is a sense that the end comes full circle with the beginning--Bachmann is still wandering, still alone, and still looking for his regiment. So much has happened in the pages in between, but readers feel a sense of symmetry and frustration, completeness and fragmentation, insufficiency and clarity. Definitely worth the read.

There are many treasures that have fallen through the cracks thanks to the ruthless advance of time, but Jakov Lind is one of the gems glittering between the floorboards.