BITTER WATERS

Uranium miners and circus folk – a family that reflects German history precisely because it is so unusual.

Ida is a child of the circus. Her parents are stars in the GDR state circus, her mother on the trapeze, her father an elephant tamer; there are even stamps with his image on them. She is sent to Tann in the Ergebirge (Ore Mountains) to live with her grandmother and start school. Her grandmother runs a pub where the miners from the uranium mine drink away their extra allowance before they die an early and miserable death from radioactive poisoning, the Schneeberg disease.

After reunification, the mine is closed and the circus sold off to a West German investor. Her parents’ marriage fails because of Stasi stories. Ida’s father hides out in his circus caravan in her grandmother’s garden and drinks. Ida follows the circus’s female elephant who has been sold to the zoo in Kiev.

Tina Pruschmann writes realistically, and yet the story about the mine workers and circus performers consistently sounds like a beautiful and dark fairy tale.