Mama Odessa

The world of the Russian-Jewish family from Hamburg, which is the focus of Maxim Biller's new novel "Mama Odessa," is filled with secrets, betrayal, and literature. We hear a clever, beautiful, and truly authentic audiobook about a son and a mother, both writers, who love each other but betray one another time and again because of their writing – and yet they never lose each other. With impressive ease, Maxim Biller connects the Odessa of World War II, the late Stalinist era, and the present day. Everything is interconnected in the Grinbaum family: the Nazi massacre of the Jews in Odessa in 1941, from which the grandfather miraculously escapes; a KGB poisoning attempt aimed at the narrator's father that affects his wife; the father's Zionist dreams, which ultimately lead him and his family to end up in Hamburg's Grindelviertel, where nothing remains to remind them of the neighborhood's Jewish past – and where he stops loving his wife to leave her for a German woman. Nevertheless, a beautiful, bright light seems to shine through the lines of this often deeply sad, extraordinary book. "Mama Odessa" is a literary masterpiece of the highest precision and poetic power, a rarity in the German language.