Michael Ebmeyer:
Der Neuling
Two things I had wanted to do for a long time: Travel to Siberia. And write my own rendering of one of my favourite literary themes: A non-descript individual is shaken out of his routine, and then transformed beyond recognition.
Suddenly, I had the opportunity to do both. I conceived a shy logistics expert who works for a fashion mail order company in Stuttgart, whose senescent company patriarch sends him on a strange business trip to Kemerovo in south-western Siberia. There, he falls in love with a singer and aspiring shaman from the small people of the Shors and determines to win her and change his life.
The year before, a lucky coincidence had brought me into contact with Kemerovo. Now I was able to embark on a journey through the region under the care of Nina Bescrovnych, an insightful and patient local, and collect locations and impressions for my story. Although it would be misleading to regard this story as a presentation of my own experiences in Siberia, it does need to be said that those August days in Kemerovo, in the taiga mountains of Gornaja Shoria, in the Shorian village Tchuvashka and on the river Mras-Su belong to the most defining moments of my life, not only as a writer.
The Shorian singer Tshyltys was not the model, but certainly a big inspiration for Ak Torgu, the singer in the novel. I had known Tshyltys’ music from a CD before travelling to Kemerovo, and now I was able to meet her in person. And not only that: Tshyltys took us along to a sacrificial ceremony at the holy site of Arshan, the cold springs, where we sacrificed vodka, milk, sausage and bread to the spirits according to the traditional Shorian rite. This excursion – by motorboat because the cold springs can only be reached by water – was the high point of a voyage that led far more deeply into Siberia from the start than I, an ignorant tourist with a mite of Russian vocabulary from “Russian Word by Word”, could ever have expected.
“Der Neuling”, my Siberian novel, is hopefully a reasonably recondite story about a man on the road into obsession, a person who flies into a foreign land as a despondent bore and ends up a clairvoyant intoxicated with love. And, although I must, of course, strictly forbid any drawing of parallels between his voyage to Siberia and mine, the “meat” of this story definitely originates in that unforgettable late summer I was permitted to spend in the Kemerovo region.
Fortunately, that voyage also has a charming sequel. In March 2009, the singer Tshyltys and I will be on a joint reading and concert tour. Nina Bescrovnych, to whom we owe our encounter, will accompany us as our interpreter.
Michael Ebmeyer
Der Neuling
Novel
Kein & Aber, Zurich, February 2009
ISBN: 978-3036955322
Two things I had wanted to do for a long time: Travel to Siberia. And write my own rendering of one of my favourite literary themes: A non-descript individual is shaken out of his routine, and then transformed beyond recognition.
Suddenly, I had the opportunity to do both. I conceived a shy logistics expert who works for a fashion mail order company in Stuttgart, whose senescent company patriarch sends him on a strange business trip to Kemerovo in south-western Siberia. There, he falls in love with a singer and aspiring shaman from the small people of the Shors and determines to win her and change his life.
The year before, a lucky coincidence had brought me into contact with Kemerovo. Now I was able to embark on a journey through the region under the care of Nina Bescrovnych, an insightful and patient local, and collect locations and impressions for my story. Although it would be misleading to regard this story as a presentation of my own experiences in Siberia, it does need to be said that those August days in Kemerovo, in the taiga mountains of Gornaja Shoria, in the Shorian village Tchuvashka and on the river Mras-Su belong to the most defining moments of my life, not only as a writer.
The Shorian singer Tshyltys was not the model, but certainly a big inspiration for Ak Torgu, the singer in the novel. I had known Tshyltys’ music from a CD before travelling to Kemerovo, and now I was able to meet her in person. And not only that: Tshyltys took us along to a sacrificial ceremony at the holy site of Arshan, the cold springs, where we sacrificed vodka, milk, sausage and bread to the spirits according to the traditional Shorian rite. This excursion – by motorboat because the cold springs can only be reached by water – was the high point of a voyage that led far more deeply into Siberia from the start than I, an ignorant tourist with a mite of Russian vocabulary from “Russian Word by Word”, could ever have expected.
“Der Neuling”, my Siberian novel, is hopefully a reasonably recondite story about a man on the road into obsession, a person who flies into a foreign land as a despondent bore and ends up a clairvoyant intoxicated with love. And, although I must, of course, strictly forbid any drawing of parallels between his voyage to Siberia and mine, the “meat” of this story definitely originates in that unforgettable late summer I was permitted to spend in the Kemerovo region.
Fortunately, that voyage also has a charming sequel. In March 2009, the singer Tshyltys and I will be on a joint reading and concert tour. Nina Bescrovnych, to whom we owe our encounter, will accompany us as our interpreter.
Michael Ebmeyer
Der Neuling
Novel
Kein & Aber, Zurich, February 2009
ISBN: 978-3036955322
