Product Description

Heinrich Hampel is a lovable rogue. His creed is: 'There are bed salesmen who succeed because they understand beds, and there are bed salesman who succeed because they understand women. The future belongs to the latter.' Heinrich charms his way into the hearts, beds and purses of his female customers in Bavaria in the 1950s. Having persuaded them to buy the best French beds, bedding and silk sheets, Heinrich proceeds to test the quality of his goods with them personally, in their homes or even in the twilight shadows of the showroom. Turnover doubles. The long-suffering Rosa, a shoe-shop assistant elevated to Hausfrau status by a shotgun marriage to Heinrich, can tell from a glance at rumpled sheets if business or love is at hand. When Bella enters the scene, Rosa begins to worry. Heinrich buys Bella a plush riverside apartment and silences Rosa with a new Opel Kadett. These are the years of the postwar economic miracle, nothing can go wrong. But everything does, and Heinrich finds himself in crippling debt. In 1962, Heinrich crosses the border to East Germany, hoping to find a haven from his family and the evils of capitalism. His wife and children turn up like bad pennies, but Heinrich is incorrigible, and the carousel starts again. This is a classic picaresque novel written with a flair for story-telling that is both beautifully old-fashioned yet modern in its use of irony. Blackly humorous and poignant by turn, the novel showcases Kumpmuller's voice: rhythmic, absorbing, fresh and new.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1678508 in Books
• Published on: 2002-10-10
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 480 pages

Review
Michael Kumpfmueller came over from Berlin to do an event at the Goethe Institut in London on Monday 7 October at 7pm with Tibor Fisher, turnout was goodand included Matt Thorne and Lawrence Norfolk. We organised a couple of key interviews - including Michael's first ever interview in English on the BRIANMORTON SHOW on BBC Radio Scotland. And MERIDIAN WRITING on BBC World Servicewill be interviewing him down the line from Berlin shortly. We also arrangedan early release of books and he signed copies at Waterstones Kensington High St and Waterstones Notting Hill Gate. Plus we also asked him to sign bookplates and copies for each of the hardback fiction buyers at Blackwells, Selfridges, and Waterstones Piccadilly, We've had the first excellent good reviews in THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH with a large one to come in WATERSTONE'S QUARTERLY "In human terms, the setting of the novel is quite bleak. But then the German Democratic Republic was bleak. In capturing its timbre so faithfully, and creating such a thoroughly sympathetic hero, Michael Kumpfmuller has pulled off aremarkable debut." Anthea Bell, SUNDAY TELEGRAPH 'Tragedy shaes this often comic story of a man forever on the run'Zulfikar Abbbany, THE INDEPENDENT "Through the peephole of Hampel's misadventures, whole worlds are presented here:East and West, the personal and the political. The movements of history are seen in individual disappointments, deceptions and self-deceptions: the compromises and bad choices and years that get away" DAILY TELEGRAPH "There are many ways to show that life is unfair; and this hugely successful first novel, which was published in Germany in 2000, must be one of the best. Michael Kumpfmueller, a former journalist, has pulled off a trick."TLS "This is a very pro

About the Author
Michael Kumpfmuller was born in 1961 in Munich and now lives in Berlin. He is a freelance journalist for Die Zeit, Suddeutscher Zeitung and Frankfurter Rundschau.

Customer Reviews

Great title but sorry not very exciting adventures
I bought this book at the airport as I had nothing to read and thought the title and plot looked interesting, and I was right they are. The book concerns Helmut who lives variously in South Africa, Russia and Germany finally escaping from debt in the west to eastern germany (before the wall fell down). I thought I would learn something of the mind set of a lost world in eastern europe where not only a wall but a culture disappeared, unfortunately I was disappointed. In fact the book starts off well with Helmut escaping to the east along with a bottle of whisky and being interrogated at the border by a friendly big brother character, from then on the book follows his life, his long suffering wife and many sexual conquests jumping back and forth in both location and time. I enjoyed the first hundred pages or so of this jaunt, and his stumbling into a successful job as a bed salesman but then, well its just 300 pages of the same and although I skipped through to the end I can only say I finished around two thirds of the book. Why? well the sexual conquests where Helmut seems to endlessly pick up women are never really developed, so in the end I wondered why he was so successful, theres no indication hes particularily good looking or clever or whitty or fun to be with or shows any committement to any of them so where are the qualities that appeal to these women? No idea. Moreover although the story is told by Helmut we learn very little about him, how hes perceived by others, what drives him (nothing as far as I could discover), so there is no development of him as an individual through the situations he encounters. Lastly we learn that people in Eastern Europe didn't have ready access to washing machines and his daughter is successful at the youth party level but not really an understanding of what it was like to live there. So if Helmut's conquest is his first sexual experience in Russia or his aunt in South Africa, or one of a mass of faceless women in the end I felt this was simply an empty shell of a man stumbing around the world and so I lost interest in the writing and storyline and simply gave up.