"Wound Edges" By Sepp Mall

The back cover of Sepp malls “wound edges” gives the reader a brief insight into the historical background of his novel: the South Tyrolean “freedom struggle”. But who of us readers already know that South Tyrol was awarded after the first world war against the will of its German inhabitants Italy? After that, the mass-immigration of Italians was subsidized by the state, to reduce the South Tyrolean gradually becoming a minority in this region. Italian was the official language, and even in schools the teaching of German was banned.

The frustration of this policy erupted in bombings. called 1961 blew freedom fighter, playing down “fucker” in the so-called Night of Fire several power poles.

The shortened information to better understand the novel, because Sepp Mall waived in his work entirely on the political and historical level. The author was born even in South Tyrol (in grays), his ancestors are certain witnesses (the book he has his father dedicated), the past of his home he will have internalized, and also in Austria, the developments will be more present than in Germany.

42 little chapter describes Mall the fate of two families in the eventful seventies the novel begins with the statement of the 12-year-old Paul (the protagonist), “his father had in air resolved “. He does not understand why his father was arrested. Now the mother cries often speaks softly to himself, expresses it charges – she knows more than she can disclose her son or can.

The father will return soon, she comforts him, and Paul is already convinced that he had done nothing illegal.

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But friend Herbert points out that one does not come for nothing in the hole – and Herbert knows a lot more, even more than political. But does not dare to ask questions to Paul; the adult world does not have access to children father is actually fired. He has changed, is now all foreign. How come he gets upset as Paul foolishly mention the name of Salvatore? The usually apathetic father threatens Maria to kill it by hand when she gets involved with such a. First comes a brief explanation of the mother, he was still imprisoned by them. Whether Paul now understands?

The narrator formulated in short, simple sentences, which facilitates identification with Paul. The impersonal terms – “the father”, “mother” – reflect the callousness and the interpersonal distance. have that Paul, friend Herbert and sister Maria hardly reservations regarding Italians living outside the home other than the father would approve, hurts the one hand; On the other hand, it is encouraging that a prejudice-free and aggression together for future generations will be possible.

The second family comes from a farm, dominant in the mountains. Daughter Johanna leaves the family farm with her younger brother Alex. Alex has a difficult childhood behind: charged with a congenital speech impediment (he stutters), the father has it always been considered inferior and often beaten. Johanna will protect him in a strange city with the foreign language. She quickly finds there a job as a nurse, and the brother can work as an electrician. He meets new friends, is manly, resolute, removed also by his sister. When he finally comes in an explosion killed, he has become a stranger to Johanna – a bomb makers, an assassin, who bears the name of his brother. She had never noticed that he led two lives, and so they had not be able to keep them from death him. Now she is hardly able to bear their guilt.

Sepp malls language style is exceptionally haunting. The more sensitive, reserved, sober he formulated, the more touching the reader the indescribable suffering of the bereaved who have never done anything wrong that could know nothing and who now must endure pain. Quietly and slowly linked Mall both storylines together. At the end, Paul and Johanna encounter in the infirmary. Unable to communicate, they are mutually briefly in his arms, while Johanna strokes his head and whispers a name. The book title “wound edges” is an apt metaphor. How incisions in the bark of trees never close completely, the emotional hurt of the families will never heal residue.