Uwe Johnson
Jahrestage – aus dem Leben
von Gesine Cresspahl
('Anniversaries: From a Year in
the Life of Gesine Cresspahl')
The year 2024 is Uwe Johnson's year in two ways: it marks both the author's 90th birthday, as well as the 40th anniversary of his death. In his great work Anniversaries: From a Year in the Life of Gesine Cresspahl, he paints a unique panorama of 20th century German history on the basis of the life of a German family in Mecklenburg, nestled in between present day New York and the events that were happening in the world in 1967/68. Every day, Gesine Cresspahl tells her ten-year-old daughter Marie a little of the family history: she talks about its life in the Weimar Republic, under the Nazi regime, under Soviet occupation and during the first years of the GDR. Simultaneously, the novel describes the mother and daughter's everyday life in New York.
The journalist and TV presenter Caren Miosga and the actor Charly Hübner have excerpted characters, episodes, memories and New York Times news snippets from the narrative flow of the four-volume novel, and have developed them into a panorama of world affairs painted with the aid of memories and contemporary observations. The pianist Ninon Gloger accompanies this interesting, entertaining and moving tour de force on the grand piano.
The audio book of the same name has been released as an unabridged reading on eight CDs (length 74 hours) by DAV.
