Speculations About Jakob

When Speculations About Jakob went to the presses in June 1959, its author moved from the GDR to West-Berlin. He was aware that this book, which contradicted the official GDR-ideology with its content and its aesthetics, could not be published in East Germany. It could not, because it traces the death of the East German train dispatcher Jakob Abs: murder, suicide or accident?

Jakob Abs was – and that is the reason for the speculations about him – carrying a great many burdens in the autumn of 1959: his mother had moved to West Germany, and the GDR’s State Security Services were trying to get him to convince Gesine Cresspahl, who relocated to West Germany after the »uprising of workers and farmers against the government of workers and farmers« in 1953, to spy for them.
In its dialogues and monologues, this novel demonstrates the search for truth – not only the truth about the death of Jakob Abs, but also the truth about the psychological and political reality of living in a partitioned Germany.

»[Speculations About Jakob] is situated at the border between two countries and two power blocs, but it also stresses the fine line between the past and a remembering present. With formal and aesthetical radicalism and mental poignancy, Uwe Johnson has called into question the objective reliability of memory – and thus written an epistemological counterpart to The Tin Drum.« Neue Zürcher Zeitung

»It’s hardly possible to imagine a text that is more relevant for today. … [Johnson’s] work shows that it’s possible to remember without becoming nostalgic, to engage with one’s past without idealizing it in hindsight, and to conquer new frontiers without declaring them the promised land.« taz. die tageszeitung

»one of the great novels of the 20th century, a modern classic that hasn’t lost its relevance at the beginning of the 21st century« literaturkritik.de Nr. 9, September 2009