Mariana Leky
What You Can See from Here
“What happens when you are surrounded by the same people all your life; people you didn’t choose but whom you come to know maybe better than yourself over time.”
Mariana Leky’s international bestseller What You Can See from Here uses the rare central African mammal okapi as a euphemism for belonging in a strange yet familiar world and explores the complexities of human relationships in a close-knit German village.
By Prathap Nair
A heartwarming novel set in the fictional village of Westerwald in Germany, What You Can See from Here approaches its heavy themes quirkily and blends humour with poignancy. It opens with Selma, a grandmother, dreaming of an okapi in Westerwald. It’s supposedly a bad omen, a harbinger of death, because the last two times it happened with Selma, someone died. Whose turn is it this time? This question of death preoccupies the village where everyone knows everyone, sometimes to the detriment of their own privacy.It's a novel where death, an unwelcome visitor, visits a bucolic village in the 80s Germany. Naturally, due to the omen’s terrifying accuracy, everyone, from the optician to the shopkeeper to the ten-year-old little Martin who goes to primary school with Selma’s granddaughter Luise, is afraid and live fearing death’s knock on their door.
Superstitious or not, the villagers, including the sharply observant Luise who narrates the novel, grapple with love, loss, and the uncertainties of life. Who could it be next? As Luise becomes witness to the cycle of death and life and other quirks of the villagers, her life ebbs and flows and she forms new connections. Mariana Leky’s charming narrative, translated seamlessly by Tess Lewis, beautifully explores human connections. Leky’s prose is amused by superstitions, delving into the complexities of relationships and exploring ways to cope with inevitable challenges.
In this interview, Leky reveals her choice of an okapi for the novel’s central theme and how, despite having read it three decades ago, she can still quote from Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things.
Selma’s dream of the okapi serves as a unique narrative device. How did you come up with this symbolism, and what does the okapi represent to you?
I have always been fascinated by the okapi and waited a long time for the right story to include this peculiar animal. What I love about the animal is its implausibility - it looks as if it was dreamed up. None of its body parts seem to fit together, yet this strange and unlikely composition makes for an elegant animal. Similarly, in my novel, some characters initially don’t seem to fit together but find harmony at the end. In this respect, the okapi functions as a figurehead in the novel.
Westerwald, the village in the novel, feels like its own character. What inspired you to create such a close-knit, small-town setting?
The story is set in a village in the 1980s. It was those times when people normally spent their whole lives in the same place, just like all their very close neighbours. This constellation interested me: what happens when you are surrounded by the same people for a lifetime? These are individuals you didn’t choose, but over time, you come to know them, perhaps even better than yourself. I wanted to explore these relationships and a small village seemed like the perfect setting.
What is your approach in writing heavy topics involving loss and grief with humour and lightness in a way that still feels uplifting?
There isn’t a recipe. In my experience, if tragic events in a novel are accompanied by a careful sprinkling of humoristic elements, the two elements meld and create a harmonious reading experience.
Luise's coming-of-age journey is deeply affected by the people around her. What do you hope readers take away from her experiences and relationships?
There is no certain message I wanted to spread. One of Luise’s struggles is that every time she lies to someone, something falls apart. In retrospect, this enables her to save a life. I also appreciate the fact that she and the people around her find the courage to confide in each other (after Selma’s dream brings along with a sense of foreboding).
How do you think the village's belief in the okapi dream reflects real-life superstitions or ways people try to make sense of life and death?
I have a great foible for superstitions. In the novel, as in real life, I find it touching and imaginative how people attempt to control the uncontrollable. There’s something charming to pretend that one can negotiate with the unpredictable, even if it is just an illusion.
Whom do you read for fun or inspiration? Can you name some of your favourite authors?
Some of my favourite authors include Birgit Vanderbecke, Elisabeth Strout, Joachim Ringelnatz, Jonathan Safran Foer, Jonathan Franzen and Fred Vargas.
Have you read any Indian authors?
I have read Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things. The fascinating thing is that I read it only once, almost thirty years ago. While I can’t recall the plot in detail, the atmosphere of the book has stayed with me vividly—I can even still quote certain passages!
Translator Diaries: Tess Lewis on her experience translating What You Can See From Here
What You Can See from Here is a touching novel about love and loss, and how desire, affection and suspicion can skew our vision of ourselves and others. Translating it was a sheer delight. Mariana Leky’s writing is meticulously structured—motifs, themes, and imagery appear and reappear unobtrusively. By the end, she ties up all the narrative threads neatly, but not too predictably. Leky plays with clichés, taking them so literally that they feel fresh again. She also uses abstractions to embody her characters’ emotional states. It was important to capture both these characteristics of her style and convey the light, wry touch that dominates her style.
When I translate a book with such a distinctive narrative voice, I immerse myself in the works of English-language writers who have similar qualities. To capture Leky’s understated and lightly sardonic humour, the complexity with which she draws her characters’ inner lives, and the elegance and suppleness of her style, I turned to the works of Jane Austen and Penelope Fitzgerald. For a similarly sympathetic rendering of human foibles, I turned to Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping. This process of translation opens doors for me to both the foreign and the familiar.
Literary translation is the life blood of the imagination and an important antidote to cultural parochialism. How limited our worlds and our lives would be without it!
