The Life of a Top-Quality Mattress

Recommended for translation by New Books in German
Recommended for translation by Pro Helvetia
English sample translation by Alyson Coombes available

The real protagonist of Tim Krohn’s book is a mattress. Many destinies cross its path.

There’s the eternal optimist Immanuel Wassermann, who, on the occasion of his spontaneous marriage to an Italian woman, buys a quality German mattress and, against the advice of his friends – he’s Jewish, the year is 1935 – sets off for Berlin.

Then there are Mirtha and Simon, who, so far – it’s the postwar period now – have only ever slept on spread-out newspapers. But Mirtha has just picked up the mattress at the Red Cross bazaar, and they sleep so well that night that they decide the next morning to take a day off, just to rest, for the first time in a long time.

And 30 years later, Giaccomo Neri happens upon the remains of the once proud quality mattress. Every year, he travels to a beach resort near Rome in the hopes of once again meeting the nameless woman to whom he once almost proposed. When he falls overboard during a fishing trip, the mattress, floating in the sea, saves him – for a while, at least – granting him one last night filled with dreams that reunite him with the beautiful stranger.

Tim Krohn uses the smallest of surfaces to reveal the vast panorama of a Europe devastated by numerous upheavals and succeeds in creating a literary highpoint that is equally tragic and comical.