Fabelland
Fableland: The East, the West, Anger and Happiness
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© Gaby Gerster
About the book
Thirty-five years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, what has become of the stroke of luck of 1989? What is the source of all the anger? Where do all the distorted images come from? Ines Geipel revisits the rift in time, exploring the upheavals that followed the end of Germany’s division. She tirelessly examines the politically charged narratives shaping the discourse in the country.
Jury evaluation
The dreams and promises of 1989 shattered against the cliffs of a collective memory that favoured transfiguration and repression over honesty and insight. In “Fabelland”, Ines Geipel develops this thesis in a work that is a cross between case studies, personal memories and political essay, captivating readers with its precise analysis and linguistic subtlety. Yet, this unillusioned examination of the ailing East German system and its posthumous whitewashing is not another reckoning. Instead, it is marked by empathy and sadness. At the same time, Geipel’s poetic language reveals a sense of possibility, one that does not relinquish the hope of reconciliation. An astonishing book that has the power to reinvigorate the often muddled discussions about East and West.
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Ines Geipel, born in 1960, is a writer and professor of verse at the Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Arts in Berlin. In 1989, after studying German literature, she fled from Jena to Darmstadt, where she studied philosophy and sociology. The central theme of her work as an author and editor is the German history of violence under both National Socialism and the GDR dictatorship. Ines Geipel received the Federal Cross of Merit on Ribbon in 2011, the Lessing Prize for Criticism in 2020, the Marieluise Fleißer Prize in 2021 and the Erich Loest Prize in 2023, and was nominated for the Leipzig Book Fair Prize for Non-Fiction in 2024.
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