Surminski covers familiar territory in his 1989 novel Grunowen: oder das vergangene Leben (Grunowen or the Past Life) - namely, the lost territory of his native East Prussia. A better subtitle might have been "You Can't Go Home Again".
Werner Tolksdorf is a widower in a west German city who is out of sorts after retiring from a career as legal counsel for a multinational corporation. Out of the blue he is invited to the 80th birthday celebration of a cerntain Felix Malotka and suddenly Tolksdorf is confronted with his own past. Werner Tolksdorf was born and raised on a large estate owned by his family in the Masurian Lake District of the former East Prussia. Felix Malotka had been the longtime coachman and loyal servant to Tolksdorf's father. For over forty years Tolksdorf had buried all memories of his home village of Grunowen, and knew nothing about the circumstances of his father's death other than that he had died as the war was ending in 1945 ("Bei Kriegsende umgekommen" was the official announcement). When he meets Malotka at his birthday party the memories began to flood back and Tolksdorf talks the old man into taking a road trip back to the old estate- now part of Poland.
But Grunowen is just a ghost town; the last Germans had vanished years before, and the only remaining resident is a mute fisherman who builds bonfires with the books from the library of the ruined Tolksdorf Schloss. Still, through the stories and reminiscence of Felix Malotka, Tolksdorf is reconnected with his vergangenes Leben and learns the shocking truth about his father.
As in Jokehnen and his other novels, Surminski is masterful in capturing the haunting beauty of the lakes and forests of Masuria. The land is eternal whether in the hands of Poland, Russia or Germany.
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