Of fish and humans
27th January 2010 by Jonas
Angelika Overath "Airport fish", 176 pages, € 17.95, Luchterhand, ISBN: 978-3630873077;
The airport itself is already a kind of microcosm, a place of fleeting encounters between people and cultures, a place where you lose, like those real-world people who are stranded in the stateless areas. And now, even an aquarium at the airport, with fish from all over the world, a world in miniature in the world in miniature. This is the Berührungsort of "Airport fish.
Angelika Overath is 52, and "Airport fish" is her acclaimed second novel. He even made it to the longlist of the German Book Prize 2009th Rightly so, as the journalist, literary critic and a fine history teacher has been successful. Unspectacular, but very mawkish.
The paths of three people cross at the airport. There is the photographer Elis, the stromert through the transit area, looking after their connecting flight, but in reality they have lost their lives. A huge 200,000-liter seawater aquarium in the terminal aroused their attention - and the man who is responsible for Tobias.
They come into the conversation. He talks about fish, sea horses and the paternity of the reproduction of corals, they have their travel and a ruptured relationship with a pilot.
Alternating between the two, and tell the logs there is a third protagonist, a senior scientist. He also sits in a glass case, the smoker, and he siniert about his marriage has just ended. Alcohol to help him about the pain.
He is at the end from which to somehow grow a new beginning - as in Elis and Tobias. The Airport Transit is here for change, for the coming and going. In a quiet sound draws Overarth the lives of three lines for ordinary people.
A wonderful story about love and change.
Rating: *****
