{"id":171444,"date":"2025-09-03T10:00:20","date_gmt":"2025-09-03T14:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=171444"},"modified":"2025-09-03T09:56:05","modified_gmt":"2025-09-03T13:56:05","slug":"stolen-goods","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2025\/09\/03\/stolen-goods\/","title":{"rendered":"Stolen Goods"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

Berlin\u2019s historic Kaufhaus des Westens (Department Store of the West) with its front gate up. C.Suthorn<\/a>, via Wikimedia Commons<\/a>. Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0<\/a>.<\/p><\/div>\n

The border opens, and people from the West bend down from the tailgates of their trucks and give presents to their poor sisters and brothers from the East: Christmas is coming, and they\u2019re giving wrapping paper away for free in the joy of reunification. But now here they come, the evil sisters from the East, the well-educated girls who took piano lessons at home, who know Faust\u2019s final monologue by heart, and they stuff the West into their pockets, they slip sunglasses from Schlecker into their sleeves and music cassettes between the buttons of their jackets, they tie sweaters they haven\u2019t paid for around their waists and even walk around the store with them on, while these things that don\u2019t belong to them slowly absorb the heat of their bodies. Well, that\u2019s just outrageous, these young ladies don\u2019t know what gratitude is (clearly they were completely ruined by the Russians), they come along and just toss cheese, sausage, and coffee, even champagne bottles and chocolate, into their shopping bags, maybe they pay for the three rolls at the top, but then they stroll out of the shopping hall, which is called a supermarket nowadays, with all those other, stolen things bouncing around underneath, and those girls don\u2019t even blush. At home they practice drawing in perspective, but on the Ku\u2019damm they put on expensive fur hats and then leave the store with alabaster faces. These same girls used to have to line up at dawn to get hold of even one copy of The Aesthetics of Resistance<\/em> by Peter Weiss\u2014and now that they can buy any book they want, they start stealing! The factories in the East are so dilapidated that those people can be happy if someone buys them for one mark: if you want to be able to afford expensive underwear, you have to work first, work until you turn old and gray, until you turn black if you have to, don\u2019t just stuff a bra down the front of your pants until you have a belly, nothing is free anymore, Christmas is over, but they don\u2019t listen, those brash young things, they drive out of the hardware store on riding lawnmowers, right past the salesman, and even give him a friendly nod, if we\u2019re not careful, they\u2019ll rob the West blind. Anno 1990.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Translated from the German by Kurt Beals.<\/em><\/p>\n

From\u00a0<\/em>Things That Disappear<\/a>, to be published by New Directions in October.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n

Jenny Erpenbeck was born in East Berlin in 1967. <\/em>Her most recent novel, <\/em>Kairos, won the 2024 International Booker Prize.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Kurt Beals is an associate professor in the department of Germanic languages and literatures at Washington University in St. Louis. He has previously translated books by Anja Utler, Regina Ullmann, and Reiner Stach.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cHere they come, the evil sisters from the East, the well-educated girls who took piano lessons at home, who know Faust\u2019s final monologue by heart, and they stuff the West into their pockets.\u201c<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":764,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7554],"tags":[15964,67827],"class_list":["post-171444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history-2","tag-berlin-wall","tag-featured"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nStolen Goods by Jenny Erpenbeck<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"September 3, 2025 \u2013 \u201cHere they come, the evil sisters from the East, the well-educated girls who took piano lessons at home, who know Faust\u2019s final monologue by heart, and they stuff the West into their pockets.\u201c\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, 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