Simple stories

The narrative in "Simple Stories" thrives on small, meaningful details and precise descriptions of the characters' feelings. Schulze is a master of suggestion and brevity. Here, we find no direct pronouncements, no speeches, no political theories, but rather stories from the East German countryside. These stories appear simple, yet they paint a complex picture of East German life in the period following the political earthquake that struck Eastern Europe in 1989, leading to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism. "Simple Stories" is a mosaic of the profound transformations that occurred at that time on all levels¿social, economic, and political. It is a novel about the period following the disintegration of one world and preceding the emergence of another: the painful transition from a totalitarian regime that guaranteed its citizens the basic necessities of life and relieved them of the burden of choice, to an open democracy based on individualism, self-realization, achievement, and the fierce competition imposed by a free market economy. The narrative in "Simple Stories" thrives on small, meaningful details and precise descriptions of the characters' feelings. Scholze tells the story of ordinary people who could not adapt to those changes, and of those who knew how to seize the opportunities of the new reality, and shows that unity was not the happy ending for all citizens of East Germany.