An experimental novel that pushes the constraints of language to bear witness to the history of both Germany and the individual.
Ju?rgen Beckerhsquo;s The Sea in the Radio is a collection of dquo;journal sentencesidquo; divided into three sections called notebooks. In this great concert of a novel, language has been pared down to a minimum: fragments, phrases, and short sentences combine and make up a life both banal and profound. It is a life in which many of the details remain unstated or, as in miniatures, float just beyond the edges of the frame. Though at first the narrative may seem to move in a relatively harmless manner, soon enough we begin to realize that the story to be told may indeed be more unsettling than we had suspected.
The Sea in the Radio is a novel that bears witness not only to oneosquo;s final years but also to oneisquo;s place within history in general and Germany squo;s cataclysmic twentieth-century past in particular.
