Book Review #7
Armin reads 'Nimm die Alpen weg'
Immerse yourself in Ralph Tharayil’s Nimm die Alpen weg [Roll Back the Mountains ] with Armin’s most recent book review for our #Vorzeichen series.
Nimm die Alpen weg [Roll Back the Mountains] by Ralph Tharayil is the first novel I can remember starting anew directly after finishing my first read through. And not because the book was particularly dense, but rather because I would have preferred to never leave its storyline. Because on each and every page I encountered innumerable layers of meaning and significance.
Tharayil narrates a tender story of two unnamed siblings in verse: their coming of age between telephone booths and reeds. The novel’s two protagonists are almost always presented as a collective “we”—both on a linguistic level, as well as throughout the story’s plotline, they appear as a single entity. Tharayil works with reoccurring images—some of which I have tried to capture in my video. Tharayil’s debut depicts a pair of siblings and—at least so I tell myself—a never-ending bicycle ride. I have to defer to visuals because I myself cannot find the proper words to describe this unique text—the way its intoxicating pictorial world resonates with me as nearly no other novel has. It feels almost ironic here to extract quotes from the text, to isolate them from their fundamental framework. Because each scene delves deep into the next, like the pair of siblings, the text itself becomes one enchanting unity. And this, despite the many things that lie before it on the path of the two siblings’ adventures.
Tharayil narrates a tender story of two unnamed siblings in verse: their coming of age between telephone booths and reeds. The novel’s two protagonists are almost always presented as a collective “we”—both on a linguistic level, as well as throughout the story’s plotline, they appear as a single entity. Tharayil works with reoccurring images—some of which I have tried to capture in my video. Tharayil’s debut depicts a pair of siblings and—at least so I tell myself—a never-ending bicycle ride. I have to defer to visuals because I myself cannot find the proper words to describe this unique text—the way its intoxicating pictorial world resonates with me as nearly no other novel has. It feels almost ironic here to extract quotes from the text, to isolate them from their fundamental framework. Because each scene delves deep into the next, like the pair of siblings, the text itself becomes one enchanting unity. And this, despite the many things that lie before it on the path of the two siblings’ adventures.