Short Stories

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31053, 7 May 1966, Page 4

Short Stories

The Night of the Giraffe. By Alfred Andersch. John Murray. 179 pp.

Alfred Andersch is a celebrated German writer, whose own experiences—he was imprisoned in Dachau for Communist sympathies, and later, in America, as a pri-soner-of-war have helped him to understand humanity. His political knowledge, and identification with modern stresses makes this book of short stories memorable for unusual settings and situations. The first and last ones stand out particularly. “The Night of the Giraffe” shows us a glimpse of the political intrigues in France at the time of the Algerian crisis, with the imperturable General de Gaulle (whose uncomplimentary soubriquet is embodied in the title) driving unconcernedly in and out of Paris where a few grim and ruthless men were preparing to destroy him, to the muddled idealist who wanted to “expose” the general’s complicity in an idiotic conspiracy, and who nearly got knifed by another fanatic for his pains. “A lover of the half-light” is equally impressive, in a different way. It is set in post-war Germany where a university lecturer, living in the West, is slowly drinking himself to death as the result of a woman walking out on both her husband and himself from the “menage-a-trois" which they had set up. Taking his mother by car into the Eastern sector —with the due formalities obeyed—to visit friends, he suddenly decides on the return journey to ignore official instructions, and tries to return to the check-point by an unauthorised route. Tragedy follows, which throws into relief the East-West mentalities, in this divided city. There are eight other stories, among them “Around the World the German Way”—a laconic description of a conscript caught up in the Boxer rebellion; “Three Phases,” a grim vignette of the war; and “The Crocodile” a lovely picture of a modern German tycoon, with Philistine tastes about old buildings. This book can be highly recommended to sophisticated tastes. The translation is by Christa Armstrong.