Krushchev's footwear

Uta aged 8 (third row, right) in the uniform of the Thälmann Pioneers. (Click to enlarge)

I've just written a piece for the Vintage Books blog on how I came to write The Valley of Unknowing, and why. Needless to say, if I hadn't met and married a former resident (see above), it never would have happened. The piece begins:

I was a child of the Cold War. To be more precise, I was a child of a nasty cold snap during the Cold War. I was born the year of the Cuban Missile Crisis, when exploding cigars were a serious hazard, and when feisty Russian leaders waved their shoes at the UN General Assembly to demonstrate the superiority of Soviet cobbling. 

Now read on...

http://www.vintage-books.co.uk/blog/from-the-author/PhilipSington/?revision#.T7TGaTVvEyM.twitter

Usedom remembered

Following the warm reception of 'Das Einstein-Mädchen' in Germany, I was recently asked to write a short piece about holidaying in that country for a touristic web site called Germany is Wunderbar. I decided, in the public interest, to recount an unexpected encounter with German naturism - which occurred during a rainstorm on the attractive island of Usedom on the Baltic coast. Click on the link below to read how it happened and what I was doing there. Rest assured there are no photographs. Any visions of dangling will be in your mind alone.

http://germanyiswunderbar.com/news/usedom-laid-bare/

Actually, for an unusual holiday tip, it's not bad. (The island, I mean, not the naturism). The proof of that particular pudding is that a few years later I went back (to the island, I mean, etc...).

From Darmstadt to Dortmund

Last week was book-ended (pun intended) by appearances at two different literary festivals in Germany: the first in Darmstadt, near Frankfurt, the second outside Dortmund in a region known as Hellweg  - which translates as “Hell’s Way” for reasons connected, so I was told, with salt.

The two events were very different, but I enjoyed them both. At Darmstadt I had the great pleasure of meeting two other British writers, Matt Beynon Rees, who had flown in from Jerusalem, and Martin Walker who came via Switzerland from his holiday home in a French vineyard.  Matt has, not unjustly, been called the Dashiell Hammett of Palestine; while Martin’s comical writings about crime in Bordeaux (in his reading the ‘victim’ was a bottle of Chateau Petrus 1989) reminded me of Clochemerle with a dash of Georges Simenon and a frisson of Inspector Clouseau. The event, which took place in the beautifully reconstructed Stadtkirche, was a sell-out, a fact which owes much to the energies and enthusiasm of the organiser, Martin Schneider. I also enjoyed meeting Béatrice Habersaat, one of the people behind DTV’s impressive marketing campaign for Das Einstein-Mädchen. Getting retailers to stock the work of an unknown writer is a huge challenge, and to this day, I’m still not sure how they managed it.

My involvement with the ‘Mord am Hellweg’ crime festival was more leisurely. Beforehand I got to spend a sunny Saturday afternoon wandering around the little town of Unna, with a very companionable minder from my German publishers, called Marianne. Like me, she suffers from a poor sense of direction and a tendency to trip over inanimate objects in her path. I bought some rather superior toy cars for Leo and consumed a variety of regional dishes.
The event itself took place on Sunday at a specially converted railway station in Werl, a small town of 20,000 (which nonetheless boasts two book shops), the birthplace of Franz von Papen, the last Chancellor of Germany before Hitler. My short readings in English were supplemented by longer readings in German by the actor Eckhard Leue. Eckhard’s is quite famous in Germany.  For millions he is the voice of WDR (Westdeutscher Rundfunk), one of the biggest broadcasters in the land. (The company HQ is known as the Funkhaus, which sounds like it ought to be where James Brown lived…) He read extremely well and with extraordinary assurance.
Despite delays on the local railway network, the turnout was extremely good. In Germany, I was told, people still enjoy gathering to hear books read aloud. Certainly the interest in literature there seems more evident and lively than just about anywhere else I've been.

Hello, Cleveland! ... I mean, Darmstadt

On Saturday I'm going to Germany for the Darmstadt Book Festival, where I'm taking part in the BRITISCHE KRIMINACHT (British Crime Night). This is not, as you might suspect, a celebration of soccer hooliganism and recreational rioting, for which we British are still so famous. It is all about British crime writing. This explains why British thriller writers Matt Beynon Rees and Martin Walker are appearing alongside me; it does not entirely explain why I am appearing alongside them. The reason, of course, is that The Einstein Girl has been largely marketed in Germany as a crime thriller, which it really isn't, despite first appearances. Many on-line booksellers have duly categorised it as such, and no doubt many book shops have too. Personally, I don't have a problem with this, although some disappointed crime addicts might.

Das Einstein-Mädchen was on the official best seller list for nine weeks recently. It will be interesting to see if that has any impact on the size of the audience. I'm looking forward to it anyway.

Details of the event can be found here:

http://venyoo.de/s298731-7-kriminacht-very-british-mit-martin-walker-matt-rees-philip-sington#6264830

I’m sorry, I’ll read that again…

There are currently two audio book versions of The Einstein Girl on the market: an unabridged version in English, produced by Oakhill Publishing; and an abridged version in German produced by DAV.  Two weeks ago I took delivery of the former and have been listening to it whenever I get the chance – which usually means in the car going to or from the shops. Made up of 12 CDs in all, it plays out at 15 hours and 2 minutes. At the current rate I should be through it by the end of September.

My experience of audio books in the past has been very mixed. Carriers was brutally abridged but vividly read by the American actor John Glover (he who, in Annie Hall, said he wanted to die by being “torn apart by wild animals”); Omega was carefully abridged and beautifully read by the actor/director/screenwriter Campbell Scott. Other productions have been more workaday; and there is one I’ve never listened to for more than five minutes because the folksy intonation of the reader is just too irritating. My conclusion? A good audio book can work as well or even better than the regular kind, if it’s well done. A bad audio book is like listening to an opera performed by frogs.

Happily, the Oakhill production is a good one. It’s read by Richard Burnip, who is fast becoming a specialist in the reading/voice-over field. He has a beautiful voice, and one that is perfect for The Einstein Girl: rich in both authority and compassion. He is particularly good at dialogue, managing to lend individuality to each and every speaker. I  look forward to hearing what he’ll come up with every time I know a new character is about to appear. He even seems familiar with German - a small, but welcome bonus. Just occasionally I do get the impression that he’s feeling his way, that he isn't quite sure where the stress of a sentence should be until he gets to the end of it, or how the intonation should be handled. On these occasions he tends to slow down, perhaps to give himself more time. But this is a perfectionist’s complaint. If each sentence and passage were to be rehearsed and re-recorded until every last stress was perfectly placed, the business of recording (not to mention editing) would have to go on for weeks, rendering the enterprise uneconomic.

Meanwhile in Germany, Das Einstein-Mädchen is still clinging onto the Der Spiegel bestseller list after nine weeks, rather to my surprise. Every week I feel sure it will finally drop off, and every week I find it’s still there. In the hours before the new lists get published (on Wednesday afternoons), I must admit, I get quite tense – which, in the grand scheme of things, is a bit silly.