At the moment everything seems to have been said about Taiwan: Nothing new in the East? You really don’t get that impression when reading Stephan Thome’s novel “Plum Rain”. How many people in Germany know Taiwan’s story in the 20th century, which Thome, who has lived in Taiwan for twelve years, tells in his generational novel?
The focus is on Umeko, who grew up at the time of the Pacific War, which was added to the Second World War in the west. Throughout her life, Thome tells of the colonization by Japan, of the liberation by the mainland Chinese and of the change to an authoritarian police state, which then developed on the island after 1945 in opposition to communist China. He does not tell the story chronologically, but cuts the scenes from Umeko’s childhood and her life as a young woman again and again against the present day, in which Umeko’s granddaughter Julie replaces her as the central figure.
Whereby central figure is actually the wrong name. Thome develops his ensemble of characters rather through a kaleidoscope of different love constellations. Umeko’s sibling love draws attention to her big brother Keiji, the town’s baseball star. Thome only hints at the emancipated love of Umeko’s father for his daughter and depicts this father as a modern, independently thinking man through his affair with Umeko’s Japanese teacher. For the intelligence of the author and novel, Thome later breaks this view when the father appears submissive, broken, and opportunistic in other family and professional relationships. Thome also lights up Keiji’s relationship with an activist who belongs to one of the indigenous peoples of Taiwan, only to give Julie a brief, harrowing glimpse into her grandparents’ relationship at the end.
Stephan Thome, born in Hessen in 1972, spent years in Taiwan and is always there for research.
(Photo: Arno Burgi / dpa)
One would almost like to believe in the Taiwanese ghosts, Stephan Thome weaves these stories so easily without ever giving the impression: too much, too forced. All the images in his Taiwanese kaleidoscope go to the heart for themselves and at the same time add a detail of East Asian history to the novel’s mosaic, as if enclosed in amber. In this regard, a scene at the harbor in particular opens your eyes in which Umeko and her father await the arrival of the liberators from the colonial power: “For years, people had been more afraid of nothing than an invasion by the Americans and despised no one more than them backward Chinese – now they were waiting for an American ship with Chinese troops and they cheered about it. “
When Umeko’s strict grandfather in ceremonial regalia and other dignitaries of the country want to receive the heroes of the 70th Army perfectly in front of an audience and the American ship only spits out a bunch of torn, ragged “coolies”, it shows an intercultural drama that is still in our century and the Chinese planes that are currently testing borders in the airspace over Taipei are shining in a different light.
Stephan Thome: Plum rain. Novel. Suhrkamp Verlag, Berlin 2021, 526 pages, 25 euros.
Thome’s means are captivating with their simplicity, for example when he illustrates political history simply by changing the names of his characters: After being liberated from Japanese domination, Umeko suddenly has to be called Hsiao Mei, and her son will later be called Harry. The way the tempo shifts seems more subtle: counterintuitive slowed down namely in the 21st century. The explanation for this is plausible: Umeko’s idyllic childhood is unencumbered because the world is told here with the feeling of a sparkling child who trusts the father, admires the brother and is not yet aware of the fragility of the circumstances. Then politics breaks into Umeko’s consciousness with British prisoners of war, and one might think: this is the turning point.
But Thome is so clever and moves into a second level, a very unique tragedy that is only told in passing: that of a friendship service, a denunciation with which Umeko is innocently guilty. This detail hides the crack that transforms the bubbling child into a silent, bitter woman and slows the pace of the novel. Such means create an atmospheric density in this book that tells far more than the mere course of events would.
Stephan Thome: Instructions for use for Taiwan. Piper Verlag, Munich 2021, 224 pages, 15 euros.
Because Stephan Thome’s affection for the country and its people is always palpable and he thinks in line with today’s historical awareness and can translate social differences into dialogues and characters, he manages to avoid any didactic trait in such an extremely elegant way. And that although one has to say: his novel is a crash course in East Asian relations. Culturally, politically, emotionally. The “new” is once again to be found in the past, and one wonders why there is so little interest in the West for historical contexts elsewhere, without which one simply cannot understand current conflicts. Where does the arrogance come from to believe that a few headlines will help you understand complex social, cultural and political developments? In other words: What luck to discover this country with Stephan Thome.