Sharon Dodua Otoo\u2019s new novel (not yet translated into English) is about a murder case, but it is not crime fiction; rather, it is the murderer\u2019s confession and the victim\u2019s last words – or better: his final monologue. I.e. it is clear from the first page who is guilty. Can we understand the protagonist\u2019s actions? The text is written in such a way that readers can form their own opinions about the case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In her detailed confession, in which she promises to reveal the whole truth, Amata Haller writes that she wanted to travel to the Baltic Sea to commemorate her grandfather with her mother, which they do every year. She admits to murdering her boss on the way there and explains that she didn\u2019t really have a choice. Heinz Brockhaus, the victim, is her superior at an aid organization for Africa and drives her to the Baltic Sea because Amata is too disorganized to get there otherwise. She misses her train and is unable to rent a car. She describes him as annoying, but she goes much further than that, recounting some of her experiences as a Black German woman and certain aspects of her family history, into which Otoo skillfully weaves historical facts. In the novel Amata\u2019s grandfather, for example, is one of the few survivors of the sinking of the Cap Arcona on May 3, 1945. The British bombed the ship at the end of World War II because they suspected German troops on board and not thousands of concentration camp prisoners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The second part of the book is Brockhaus\u2019s endless rambling during the car ride to the Baltic Sea, which drives Amata to the brink of rage and ultimately leads her to murder him. I also found Brockhaus really annoying \u2013 a middle-aged white man who thinks he\u2019s doing everything right, but is actually pushy and lacks self-reflection. It reminded me of the expression \u201cI could kill him,\u201d which Amata apparently takes literally. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In just 139 pages, Otoo covers an enormous range of topics and addresses current debates, such as the renaming of streets with colonial or racist names, the restitution of African art, the illness ME\/CFS, and men who feel threatened by feminism. Nevertheless, This is kinda how it went down\u2026<\/em> is significantly less complex than Ada\u2019s Room<\/em>, which is certainly due to the novel\u2019s brevity. Some of the topics are heavy, but Otoo\u2019s characters are once again quite humorous. Amata uses a rather dry and, at times, unconventional style of language, for example, when she translates English terms like \u201csmartphone\u201d into German and refers to it as a \u201cKlugfon.\u201d This is kinda how it all went down\u2026<\/em> is therefore a fun read in spite of it all. Here and there, I almost wished I could have read a little more about the topics that were touched upon and the characters mentioned in passing, such as Amata\u2019s grandfather or other family members.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sharon Dodua Otoo\u2019s new novel (not yet translated into English) is about a murder case, but it is not crime fiction; rather, it is the murderer\u2019s confession and the victim\u2019s last words – or better: his final monologue. I.e. it is clear from the first page who is guilty. Can we understand the protagonist\u2019s actions? […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":24073,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[103],"tags":[2702,3329,830,938,571,3326,1107,114,539,3331,3330],"class_list":["post-24076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-review","tag-adas-raum-en","tag-adas-room-2","tag-black-german","tag-black-german-experience","tag-black-german-history","tag-cap-arcona","tag-crime","tag-crime-fiction","tag-sharon-dodua-otoo","tag-short-novels","tag-this-is-kinda-how-it-all-went-down"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24076","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24076"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24076\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24077,"href":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24076\/revisions\/24077"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}