Meike Ziervogel

In June last year, ANZ LitLovers reached its ten year anniversary, and among the kind wishes from around the world came a very special gift to mark the occasion, from Kim at Reading Matters in London. The book is Shatila Stories, a slim novella of interlinked short stories which was written in a most unusual way.

Meike Ziervogel explains its genesis in the Introduction. Founder of London-based Peirene Press which specialises in translated fiction, she undertook this ambitious project in Lebanon, where she worked with an NGO called Basmeh & Zeitooneh (“the Smile and the Olive”) to create an authentic story from the Shatila Refugee Camp which was set up for Palestinian refugees in 1949 after the formation of Israel, but is now swollen with refugees from the war in Syria. Funded by a Kickstarter campaign, and with the help of London-based editor Suhir Helal, the project ran a three-day creative writing workshop to teach basic story-writing skills to a pre-selected group of participants. The individual stories which resulted were to become subplots woven into a narrative structure devised by Helal and Ziervogel.

The nine participants, aged 18 to 42 wrote under enormous difficulties. The Shatila camp is chaotic, and lawless, governed by opposing Palestinian groups. Attendance was patchy for some participants...

One participant's niece was killed by the low-hanging electrical cables, a grandmother slipped badly in one of the camp's muddy alleys and someone else's father died in Syria. (p.18)

The writing space at the Basmeh and Zeitooneh community centre was cramped and stuffy, shared a wall with a dancing class, and there were no computers, only pen and paper. Some of the writers had never completed formal schooling and quite a few had never read a novel in their lives.

Ziervogel's confidence waned in the face of these difficulties, but she persisted and after the workshops, the participants had six weeks to complete a 4,000 word draft, queuing up at the centre to use WhatsApp on the centre's sole computer to confer with Ziervogel and Helal back in London. The results were four good stories and five interesting drafts and Helal and Ziervogel then returned to work with the writers on these stories and integrate them into a single narrative.

Switching between first and third person narratives, the linked stories provide a vivid picture of life in the camp.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2019/02/03/shatila-stories-a-collaborative-writing-proj...… (mehr)

The stories here are straightforward tales interweaving the lives of primarily two families. My rating is more for the efforts of Peirene Press in organizing the writing workshop in Shatila Camp for the novice refugee writers and then the editors/translator who combined the initial stories into a collective narrative. There is both tragedy and hope here. The circumstances are dire but the hope and optimism achieved by even simple things such as the love of music, opportunities of education and work experience shines through.

Peirene Press is currently donating a portion of each book's sales to the Basmeh-Zeitooneh Lebanese Refugee Assistance NGO. See further information at the Peirene Press website.… (mehr)

Magda Goebbels is a reviled character having killed all six of her children, before commiting suicide, in the infamous bunker during Adolph Hitler's final days. How could any woman commit such a despicable act?

Meike Ziervogel has courageously portrayed Magda as a woman first and foremost..and a very damaged one at that. The illegitimate daughter of a servant girl, she was made to feel unwanted throughout her childhood. However, this made her more determined and very ambitious, craving the love and recognition denied to her for so long. Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's propaganda minister, was the answer to all Magda's prayers. In him she found a soul mate and relished the attention and notoriety being his wife brought her way. Like her mother before her, her relationship with her five daughters and one son was tenuous to say the least. Constantly unwell, her children barely saw her for days on end.

The author has cleverly told Magda's story, spanning fact and fiction, in to eight short chapters. We learn of Magda's early life, her mother's somewhat spiteful take on her own daughter, and, achingly sad, are excerpts from the eldest child Helga's diary. She is just fourteen,on the brink of adulthood, and Ms Ziervogel has really understood the psyche of an unloved child writing to her only friend.

Meike makes no excuses for Magda, but presents her story honestly and intelligently, combining historical fact with wise perception. Magda's "vision" for what would become of her children if they were to fall in to the hands of the "brutish" enemy seems deluded, but how easy it must have been to believe, shut away underground with no hope left

Someone once told me that "hurt people hurt people" and this is never more evident than in this wonderful short novel. Magda and Helga will remain with me for some time.… (mehr)