Micefest

There he still sits, Moise, just as we know him from our schoolbooks, on his little stool in his small shop, enjoying the sight of his mice celebrating a feast in the silver moonlight, dancing around the crust of bread meant for them. And when the young soldier enters, a German with a milk mustache who wants to see how the Jewish people live, a lump still rises in our throats, for we know what Moise only suspects for now. In just four and a half pages, Johannes Bobrowski has described the entire misery that the German invasion of Poland brought with it, quietly but all the more persistently embedding itself in memory. The twenty-two stories, published as Quarthefte 3 and 29 by Wagenbach, draw their strength from the vast landscapes of the East, which stand before the reader's eyes in still, clear images. They are populated by all sorts of quirky characters.