Siblings, the first English translation of a novel by German writer Brigitte Reimann, opens with a bang, an argument – “I’ll never forgive you” – and the fear of violence: “When we’d argued in the past, he’d thrown shoes at me and once even a vase.”
It’s a splendid opening for a story of what happens when the tense bonds of family are stretched to snapping point by the politics of a divided nation. The rest of the novel builds up to the argument, which is between brother and sister Uli and Elisabeth Arendt, residents of Germany in 1960 – East Germany, that is; the socialist utopia separated from the freer, more affluent west. Uli wants to defect, go over the border – “I’m not going to the South Pole,” he pleads. “Just from one Germany to another.”
