Herron and Levinsky

The book of Charles Levinsky “Herron” in the Russian translation will soon be released by the Exmo publishing house in the series under the slogan “Intellectual Bestseller - reads the whole world”. But for some reason, the writer did not hear about this until he met with a delegation of Russian journalists in the discreet of the Zurich cafe Rizzoli , which is near his house on Hottingerstrasse .

Levinsky, a modestly dressed elderly man with a magnificent nose, looks inquiringly at journalists from under elegant glasses: “Is it in Russia?” Well, yes, this is written in the reports issued to us from the Helwecy Foundation, which is engaged in the popularization of Swiss literature, supporting foreign publishers and translators with money. "Who is the translator?" We wanted to ask you. Finally, after the most successful start of the conversation, the writer, shaking his gray curls, is laughing - obviously to defuse the situation: “Recently they sent me my book, published in China. But what can I say about how it is translated? But on the shelf it looks spectacular. ”

Charles Levinsky is a successful Swiss writer. He writes in a literary German, on which he does not speak in life. In Switzerland, where four language cultures (German, French, Italian and Retorom’s) are constitutionally coexisted, they speak in the dialect of German, which, according to Russian guides, sounds funny for the Germans as a Russian ear - it seems ridiculous to extreme. Schwicucaduch! To write in Goethe’s language and angels Merkel in Switzerland are Business - Wise , as the Americans say. Publications in German occupy a large share of the two -million -billion book market of a small country, which is refueling the leading publishers of Germany. In one of these, Herron Levinsky came out, who, in his own words, wrote the first story of 12, and only 60 waited for the first success.

"Who is the translator of my novel?" “We wanted to ask you.”

“Herron” is named after the pseudonym the protagonist, the real historical character of Kurt Gerson-the German singer, the actor and director of Jewish origin, singing the Mackie-Note in the “Trekhgroshova Opera” at Brecht and withdrawn from Dietrich. In 1933, Herzon-Herron had to flee to Holland from the Nazis who came to power, where he managed to saddle the second wave of recognition and love-to become a lifetime classic and almost the founder of the National School of Cinema. However, the Nazi regime found a fugitive in his new shelter-at the end of the war, Herron finds himself in the concentration camp of Terezienstadt, invented as an exemplary prejudice of Auschwitz. The camp administration offers a well -known prisoner to make an advertising film about how the life in the ghetto is satisfied, and that "the camp is our big family." To save himself and his wife, Herron agrees to a humiliating offer (the film was shot - his fragments can be found on YouTube ). But before agreeing, he escapes to his memories of childhood and pre -war Berlin, about the family, about Brecht and the last day of a happy life, after which the ongoing nightmare began.

"Hitler gives the Jews the city"

Before writing began to bring Levinski income (local authors, even the most successful, like Peter of the strain - the first Swiss nominated for the Buker Prize, and Levinsky’s neighbor according to the Hottingerstrasse , complain that they pay them unfairly little), he earned a screenwriter on television. This is noticeable according to Herron - the novel is written as a ready -made film scene. The author is easy, as if pressing the buttons on the remote control, switches the hero’s thoughts (the novel from the first person) from paradise of memories to the oppressing limit of everyday life so that the reader does not get bored. Levinsky, who was preparing the novel for three years, skillfully added melodramatic details to the stingy biography of the hero-like a fragment of a shell in the First World War, which deprived the 17-year-old Herron, the opportunity to have children-and strengthened the text with bright visual details. But you believe all his fiction. Over a cup of coffee in Rizzoli, Charles Levinski informed Russian journalists that after the book was released, an elderly Israeli, who met in Terezienstadt Herron, found him, and said that everything was described exactly as it was. Although it is possible that this story is part of the scenario, developed in detail by Levinsky.

Answering the question “why Herron”, Levinsky, who loves Flobert and Oblomov, drinks a sip of McKoyato, wrinkles his nose and says that this is not a writer chooses a story that the reader wants to read, but a story who cannot calm down until he retells it to someone. He accidentally heard the biography of Kurt Herron in some radio program for so long that he no longer remembers. Before Herron, Levinski composed a historical and fiction novel about what would happen if Hitler Germany had won Switzerland, and the Mill Saga, which told the history of the Swiss Jewish family from 1871 to 1945.

The camp administration offers a well -known prisoner to make an advertising film about how the life in the ghetto is satisfied.

To publish on German historical novels about personal tragedy against the background of World War II, either a birch, or talking about the psychological injuries caused by Europe Nazism, is also Business - Wise . Judging by the tables of book bestsellers, such plots are well bought - both in Germany, which does not get tired of repenting the Jewish genocide, and in Switzerland, which relatively recently began to reflect on the topic of their neutrality and (imaginary?) Undressing in the military crimes of that time. But for Charles Levinsky, Nazism in Europe is a too personal topic, blood.

He is the heir to almost all sides, not for life, but to the death of those who have come down in the Second World War. One of his great-grandfathers-the German-was the head of the camp somewhere near the borders of Russia and brought a Russian wife from there, along another line the writer comes from a family of Swiss Jews. The blood theme will never let him go.

On November 28, on Thursday, as part of a large Swiss program, the open discussion of Charles Levinski with Russian writer Alexander Terekhov will take place at the Fair of N /Fictio N No. 15.

The editors thanks the Helvetia Foundation, Swiss airline AIR and the Switzerland tourism office in Moscow for help in organizing a trip to Switzerland.