Clemens Meyer’s autobiographical debut novel Als wir träumten, originally published in 2006, and now issued by Fitzcarraldo Editions in an English translation by Katy Derbyshire, has achieved something of a cult status in Germany as a fictionalised, literary account of the so-called “baseball bat years”. This term refers to the period right after the unification of West and East Germany, characterised by the rise of right-wing violence in the East. Meyer’s novel, in fact, is set in Leipzig over a period of roughly a decade straddling the eighties and nineties, and follows the misadventures of the teenage narrator – Daniel “Danny” Lenz – and his group of friends as they try to navigate their way into adulthood without ending up dead or in prison. (Spoiler – not all of them succeed)

The novel paints a bleak picture of the time, as the boys grow into men in an environment marked by poverty, alcohol, violence and delinquency. Their lives are unmoored and rudderless, a feeling further emphasized by the book’s episodic structure. The novel’s chapters do not follow a chronological order. Instead, the narration jumps backwards and forwards, and requires concentration until the pieces start falling into place. Just to give some examples, one of Danny’s friends insists on being called “Pitbull”, but it is only late in the novel that we learn how he got his nickname. Another dies after a carjacking gone horribly wrong, but he resurfaces in later episodes in the book (obviously set at an earlier date).

At over 500 pages, the novel is, in my view, overlong, especially considering the absence of an overarching plot, and a tendency for repetition (there’s a limit to the number of description of fights, beatings and drunken evenings, which one can take at a sitting). I admit that when I first started reading it, it tired me out around half way through, but I then picked it up again after a hiatus of over a year and appreciated it much more. And despite first impressions, it’s not all doom and gloom. Underneath the darkness, there’s often a streak of humour, as well as, perhaps more surprisingly, bursts of warm humanity.

Katy Derbyshire deserves special kudos for bringing this translation project to fruition. Obviously, all translations present their specific challenges, but when the language and setting are so place-and-time-specific as in this novel, full as it is of the “street slang” of the period, it’s particularly difficult to retain the novel’s original impact and meaning. Derbyshire succeeds in rendering Meyer’s work in a tone which rings authentic and true. It’s eye opening to read about Derbyshire’s own account of the dilemmas she faced and choices she made in translating the novel.

3.5*

https://endsoftheword.blogspot.com/2024/08/while-we-were-dreaming-by-clemens-meyer.html

“While We Were Dreaming” – Clemens Meyer (translated from German by Katy Derbyshire)

“But it was the drugs, the bastard drugs that messed everything up, that smashed up our dream, the dream not even the Markkleebergers, the hools, Engel’s people and all the cops in Leipzig could put a stop to.”

Set in Leipzig in the years before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall, “While We Were Dreaming follows a group of young men growing up in the shadow of this collapse, their lives tinged with crime, drugs, gang violence and stints in prison.

One thing to be prepared for: this is a very male, macho book, one built of male loyalty to each other and violence solving issues, and any women in the book are very much seen through the lens of a teenager, either sexual object or motherly authority figure with very few exceptions over the near 600-page novel (too long, in my opinion).

The book is told in a very non-linear fashion, effectively a series of vignettes which appear out of sequence (I think this is a clear Tarantino nod), which actually worked quite well for me. We see the various characters grow and shrink, with secrets and actions often only revealed after their consequences are shown to us. Watching certain characters, Mark and Rico in particular, return from the repercussions of their actions through a time skip is often a gut punch, as we know what is coming and can do nothing to stop it.

Is this a perfect book? Far from it, and some people are going to hate it. However, I have to say I was drawn in by its rawness, the wild stories and bravado of the young teens striking a chord with how I remember feeling at points as a youth. It somehow felt fantastical and yet achingly real, and I see why it got prize buzz.

A cautious recommendation from me – if you go in prepared for the subject matter, there’s a lot to like here, I think.

TW: violence, d***s

⭐️⭐️⭐️.5/5

While We Were Dreaming tells the story of a group of young boys in East Leipzig, growing up in the late 1980s following the fall of the Berlin Wall. Its central character, Daniel, and his friends Rico, Pitbull, Walter, Mark and Paul are growing up in difficult family circumstances, surrounded by alcohol, drugs, gangs and general poverty in East Germany, and their decisions are often a reflection of their unstable environment.

👍🏼The Good:
- the characters really make this book brilliant, they are extremely well thought out, and come across as very realistic
- certain scenes of tension having been built up over time were written very well and give a good insight into the character’s emotions through showing rather than telling
- although it was occasionally confusing, I enjoyed the non-linear timeline and piecing together the story as each chapter finished

👎🏼The Not-So-Good
- although I enjoyed the majority of the book, it is nearly 600 pages long and not what I’d call an easy read, so towards the end I was struggling a little to stay focused

I found it somewhat similar to Trainspotting (which I’ve only watched not read) in terms of the content, so if that sounds up your street, then add this to your list!

Took me a while to get into and to be honest the first 50 pages felt like a slog, but ended up really enjoying it. Very bleak but also funny in parts. Definitely not for everyone but I will definitely be buying a physical copy of this to reread in the future.

A well-written, insular read that centres a group of boys at the fringes of Germany, unheeded in the time of its reunification. Realistically speaks from the mundanity of daily life but it could also get quite tedious, especially through quite a male-dominated perspective, not separate from rage, misogyny, and violence. Though it could get confusing, I did quite like the element of surprise offered by the non-linear perspective. Overall, glad I read it, and my sincere gratitude to netgalley and the publisher for a complimentary copy.

I wanted to read this, particularly after it came up for the international booker prize but I found the male dominated, vivid and lurid narrative difficult to contend with. Not one for me!

I found this book captivating for its slow burn of drama, and the ways that the characters' innocence and naivety were constantly both upended, but also attempted to obscure the terrifying realities of the world around them.

Their slow panic and realisations of the ever-changing landscape around them built to a powerful, if fearful, end.

I received an advanced copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I found this book, at times hard to read, because how lost most of those kids were... It was another time, when the dinamic between people was different, but at the same time, the same. Really enjoyed these friendships, but sometimes just felt like shaking them all! Put some sense into those heads.
I liked the prose, and didn't really have a problem with the time jumps.
Will be reading Meyer's other works in the future.

OMG OMG this book is nominated for Bookers! Wish it made it to shortlist but yeah, the fact that it actually got the recognition makes me so happy!

While we were dreaming was a ride.

Our narrator is Danny, a kid growing up in Leipzig, spending time with his friends: Rico (passion: boxing), Mark (it's drugs), Little Walter (stealing cars), Stefan/Pitbull (quite a story here for his name) & others. As you can see from their interests, the world they are living in is full of fighting, stealing, drugs, violence, porn. At any point in the book, one of them (or all) is in jail, at the police station, recovering from a fight, getting into a fight, there is no hesitation to get violent with them or with the people around. It it interesting that the title indicates a glimmer of hope, while the horrible things that happen to them/are caused by them seem inevitable, just the way things are. It is a world where only fists solve anything, if you want to protect your circle. Clearly, it is male oriented novel, women do not appear often and when they do, it is mostly in a sexual or domestic violence related context. While I would not like all my books to be like that, I think this is a well crafted novel, painting a raw, cruel picture of life during and after the fall of the Wall.

Now, going to my favourite part, the structure. The story is told in a non-linear way, I really enjoyed connecting the dots during this long journey of 500 pages. You might find out that a character is dead and only later discover why, how, you know that Stefan changed his name to Pitbull, but why? These building blocks help us, as readers, to better understand the relationships between characters, between these friends that sometimes help each other and sometimes betray each other in the worst possible way.

This is a 3.5 stars book for me, rounded up to 4 stars.

My personal order for International Booker 2023:
1. Still born (now shortlisted) - 4 stars
2. While we were dreaming - 3.5 stars
3. Pyre - 2 stars

Thanks to Fitzcarraldo Editions and Netgalley for providing an ARC in exchange for a honest review.

“While We Were Dreaming” by Clemens Meyer is a powerful novel that follows the lives of a group of boys in Leipzig during the tumultuous years of German reunification. In the wake of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the subsequent years, many young people in the former East Germany found themselves struggling to come to terms with the sudden changes in their lives. The characters’ dreams and aspirations are constantly challenged by the harsh realities of their environment.

Clemens Meyer explores these changes, describing vividly the desperation, confusion and lack of direction that permeates the lives of these boys. His writing is raw and visceral, which adds authenticity to the characters and their experiences.

Meyer employs a non-linear and complex narrative structure that helps to tell the story from the perspective of the different characters in the book. I found it very interesting, but for some readers, that might be disorienting. The vivid descriptions of sex, drugs and violence can also make the reading quite uncomfortable at times.


Overall, While We Were Dreaming is a challenging book that explores the struggles of young people on the margins of society to find their footing in a world that seemed to be changing too quickly for them to keep up. It is not a book for everyone, but for those who are willing to persist and confront the darker aspects of the human condition, it can be a rewarding read.

Although it’s long, this book was wild and bizarre and managed to keep me engaged throughout. The way the story started out with the teenagers behaving in questionable ways had me hooked instantly. I definitely think it should have been shortlisted for the international Booker prize 2023.

Couldn’t really get into this book past the first few pages in the end unfortunately. Writing style was not for me nor was liberally stating a female in a coma as a slut. I’m sure there’s plenty of people who will get into this past the first starting pages but not for me on this occasion unfortunately. DNF.

This is my favorite book of all the books longlisted for the International Booker Prize 2023. I will not, I can not, forget the power of Clemens Meyer’s story, and his mates’, with whom I lived for the duration of the novel. I felt their every bruise and wound, I felt their longing and their determination. It has my highest praise.

This novel is not going to be for everyone. However, I loved it.
We follow a group of friends, all boys, who after the fall of the Wall, grow up in a rather tumultuous environment. Their homes are not safe, the streets are dangerous, they can only rely among themselves.
There were beautiful written scenes which were claustrophobic, full of tension and kept you on the edge of your sit. You did not know when someone was going to die or when something was going to go completely wrong, but you knew it was going to happen. This sense of impending doom was everywhere.
The story jumps from future to past and sometimes you did not even know if what you were reading was true or not.
Drugs, alcohol, theft, cars, fights, physical abuse... these boys lived it all.

I am very glad I read this novel, I want to keep reading Meyer in the future.

Longlisted for the International Booker Prize for 2023, this German coming-of-age epic finally gets an English translation almost 20 years later. And a worthy read it is, too. Not easy, it has to be said. It is almost relentlessly and grimly masculine - sex, drugs, violence, and just general boyishness growing up in the years either side of the Berlin wall coming down. What keeps your attention is the writing, and the sometimes non-linear narrative that jumps about.

It is, though, a book that will divide readers. It is worth persevering, and deserves its place on the longlist. I suspect it will also reach the shortlist. 4 worthy stars.

(With thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC of this title.)

'While We Were Dreaming', written and published in German in 2007, recently translated beautifully into English by Katy Derbyshire, looks at the life of a group of young men from around twelve years old to early adulthood (eighteen/nineteen).

Danny, Rico, Mark, 'Porno' Paul, Stefan ('Pitbull') and Little Walter live in Leipzig; and were thirteen years old in 1989 when the Berlin Wall was torn down. So we see them growing to adulthood in the turbulent years following the Reunification of Germany.

Teenage years are already difficult enough, but when you live in a 'rough' urban area of an Eastern European city with not a lot to lose and everything to gain, there are many more difficulties and trials to face.

Clemens Meyer has written in jumbled vignettes, skipping to and fro throughout the years so that at times it can become difficult for the Reader to place where we are in the boys lives and what age they must be. This confusion is often added to by the dawning realisation we come to as we read that the narrator here isn't necessarily particularly reliable. I felt that, as is often the case with young men like these who have something to prove and a reputation to build or maintain, some of these stories were perhaps exaggerated; or, a tale heard about someone else might have been co-opted and worked into their own 'Legend'. Then we also have the fact that liberal amounts of alcohol and much drug-taking are involved in the stories/memories recounted, which seemingly begins to build from the earliest age covered here to the point that around their mid-teens they seem to be existing in such a haze of substance abuse we can surely doubt much of what they seem to recall?

As I reached the final section of the piece, I also began to imagine the writer himself, trying out different versions of the same scenarios to see which one works best. So in this respect, like the last Fitzcarraldo work I read, 'The Private Life of Trees', Meyers also seems to have created something which is as much about the art of creating and story-telling as it is about the subjects and setting of his novel.

The title of the novel is after all 'While We Were Dreaming' and I think it safe to say that, one way or another, we can't be sure what is 'real' and what has been imagined. However, regardless of the slightly 'fever dream' presentation, I found this work to be entirely engaging and one of the reasons for that was that I could genuinely relate to the characters. I expect that a reason that some people will really enjoy this read is that they, like me, also come from a background like that depicted in this book. While I was born and raised in the North-West of England, rather than Eastern Germany, I too grew to adulthood in the grim post-industrial poverty soaked areas (though in the '70s and '80s) which bred the escapist recreational drug-taking, drinking, theft and joy riding which we see described here. I knew boys like our main characters in 'While We Were Dreaming'. I indulged in some of the behaviours depicted during my own teens.

I don't want to give anything more away, but I think Clemens Meyer has written a very clever depiction of what might have been real in that place, at that time. Everything is painted in such a wonderfully (though depressingly) atmospheric way. The football violence, the grim streets and blocks of flats/apartments, the techno clubs and raves in abandoned factories, 'red light' areas - and even the consequences of the boys' wild behaviour; all are faithfully recreated in this novel.

I enjoyed this book very much and had great appreciation for the skill with which it was both written and translated. In my opinion 'While We Were Dreaming' deserves to be recognised in prize lists this year. I am grateful to Fitzcarraldo Editions and Netgalley for furnishing me with a digital ARC, this title is now on my list of books I would love to buy a physical copy of sometime soon.

This is a great new translation of a German classic written nearly 20 years ago about life in Berlin in 1989. It is a rich, layered story, sometimes bleak and shocking, but also sometimes very funny. It's authentic and honest. a book with depth and emotion. These characteristics have been kept alive in this excellent translation. It is a slightly challenging read, but once you are in it becomes a page turner. A worthy Booker nominee.

I was really looking forward to Reading Clemens Meyer. It was the content that didn't work for me rather than anything against Meyers style & writing. It is of course published by Fitzcarraldo which is a clear mark of quality literature. Unfortunately, a bunch of young teenage boys running round Berlin just wasn't something I connected to or wanted to read about. I thought I did hence why I requested the novel as I thought maybe it would have a similar feel to the protagonist's of The Catcher in the Rye or even the Secret History. But alas, no. I'll still be reading all the Fitzcarraldo books I can get my hands on because that fact that they were the publishers of this book was the reason I selected it in the first place on NetGalley.

Longlisted for the 2023 International Booker Prize

"But it was the drugs, the bastard drugs that messed everything up, that smashed up our dream, the dream not even the Markkleebergers, the hools, Engel’s people and all the cops in Leipzig could put a stop to."

While We Were Dreaming is Katy Derbyshire's translation of Clemens Meyer's 2006 debut novel Als wir träumten. I've previously read her translations of two of his later (in the original, but earlier in English) works, the novel Bricks and Mortar and the story collection Dark Satellites.

My review of the former pointed to the fascinating and complex voice - "multiple perspectives and different voices, told in a non-linear fashion ... we’re not always clear who the narrator is and even within a given narrative points of view and times shift. Characters “reminisce” about the future" - but also my own frustrations as a reader, both in the subject matter, but also the excessive length which combined with the narrative style to make it hard to follow the real story. I concluded: 5 for the literary merit and the brilliance of the translation and 1 for my personal reading experience.

Reading While We Were Dreaming one can see how this, as the author's debut, developed in to the more complex later work. It shares the same (for my taste, excessive) length, the dark subject matter and very masculine point of view, and the non-linear narration. However, it's a more accessible work, the narration within each section actually relatively straightforward, and succeeded in holding my interest to the end, and making me unpiece and then engage with each character's journeys.

While We Were Dreaming is the story of a group of youths in Leipzig either side of German reunification, the main characters aged c13 at the time the Wall fell. Our narrator is Danny, and his gang of friends include: 'Porno' Paul, known for his extensive collection of magazines and videos although he found his one experience of the real act rather distasteful; Rico, once a promising amateur boxer but who has more success employing his skills are more useful for gang fights; Mark, who becomes addicted to drugs; Stefan who prefers to be known as Pitbull; and 'Little' Walter, who takes his pleasure and meets his fiery end in carjacking.

The story is told in vignettes in non-chronological order, so that we may find ourselves at a character’s funeral but only learn of his death later, or jumping from adulthood years after 1989 to school during the DDR era.

This is the story of a group from the 'wrong' side of the tracks as well as the 'wrong' side of the Wall, whose behaviour graduates from insubordination at school (Rico is the first to be send to youth custody for burning his pioneer scarf) to shoplifting, carjacking, fights with rival gangs and fans of other clubs, and alcohol and drug addicition. Detention - first in a youth centre that is almost like a summer camp but later in adult prisons - is an occupational hazard.

But Meyer also shows us their positive side: - the gangs and rival fans they most despise are those with neo-Nazi sympathies; and they are loyal to one another (although Danny's own honest narration documents some early incidents where he hid rather than helped his friends). A representative incident has them befriend an elderly lady and provide her with companionship and practical help, but the companionship is largely as she enjoys sharing alcohol with them and they help themselves, behind her back, to her cash as 'compensation' for their work.

Literature, particularly translated literature, should give on insight and empathy into different lives, and this succeeded, although I also can’t avoid acknowledging that the book most came to live in the scenes with which I could connect more, rather than those involve violence, sex and booze, such as an amusing incident when two first see and use a microwave and try to make toast:

‘I can’t see anything,’ I said. ‘We should be able to see something by now, it should be getting brown or something.’
‘Just wait another minute.’
‘Hey, the mags, weren’t you going to get the mags?’
‘Yeah, yeah. But look at this first!’
‘Come on, it’s crap, I thought we could have pizza or something.’
‘I can’t help it, Danny. My mum hasn’t been shopping yet, she was going to...’
Ding! The bell rang once, the plate stopped turning and the light went off. Mark opened the door. The bread looked exactly the same as before. He took one slice out and dropped it.
‘Damn, it’s boiling hot!’
The bread was on the floor; I picked it up carefully.
‘It’s all soft,’ I said, ‘and a bit clammy. Not exactly nice crispy toast.’
Mark used a tea towel to take the glass plate out of the microwave. He pressed his finger into the other slice.
‘I dunno, Danny, it really is a bit soft. I must have set it wrong. Look, you can set the power here, it must have been way too low...’

Or the travails of the local club, Chemie whose history rather neatly illuminates the upheaveals of reunification:

"We got to Chemie late, Rico and me, that Sunday in the year after the Wall came down, when we played BFC Dynamo. It was the last season of the GDR League, even though the GDR didn’t exist by then. BSG Chemie Leipzig didn’t exist any more either, we were called FC Sachsen Leipzig now, and a few months before that we’d been called FC Green-White Leipzig for a while, but we didn’t understand why, we believed in Chemie and we were Chemie, forever. BFC wasn’t called BFC either any more, they were FC Berlin, but we didn’t care, we hated them either way."

Derbyshire explains some of the translation choices she made here, including the titles of her previous translations (this one easier). It's interesting to note how her say "I want the characters’ language to change subtly as they get older, from childhood to youthful bravado to jaded machismo" as she definitely succeeds in this, and generally in the tone of the story, which is all the more striking with the non-chronological nature of the novel, this tone, as well as more explicit references, acting to signpost where we are at any point in time.

This is a less ambitious work than Bricks and Mortar but for me a personally more successful one - 4.5 stars for the literary merit and quality of the translation and 3.5 for my own reading experience. On a relatively weak International Booker list this is one of the stronger entries so I will round up to 4 stars.