OF PUNCHES AND CAKES
"In The End, It Was All About Love" by Musa Okwonga is a true New-Berliner novel
By Martin Zähringer

(The following text is mostly an automatic translation, the original text in German will be published on 3th of June here:
https://www.literaturport.de/ Leselampe)

It makes sense to move from the metropolis of capital to the metropolis of culture to pursue the adventure of writing. Londoner Musa Okwonga did just that, possibly seduced by Wowereit's city marketing to bohemia in Berlin - Arm-Aber-Sexy (poor but sexy). Anyway, he gave up a capitalist career in London and moved to Berlin-Friedrichshain to pursue an artistic one. Among other things as a musician, city flaneur with Handycam, author of soccer books, essayist in many branches and digital author with now over 100,000 followers. Looking at that quota in digital media, that looks like a good choice (I'm at one hundred and two after 1 year, but more active @mzlections as a sideline). How Okwonga's soccer books are selling is beyond me, but in his debut novel "Es ging immer nur um Liebe" (In The End, It Was All About Love, Rough Trade Books) the balance of his "German adventure" looks a bit precarious.

There was not always love in Berlin, but also hatred and baseness, and success in the social media world is based on self-exploitation and often on social isolation. At the beginning of the novel - and in the aftermath of an artfully executed literary writing process - it is reflected thus:
"Sooner or later, Berlin will punch you in the pit of the stomach. When that happens, please try not to take it personally - try instead to think of it as a stamp in your passport, a sign of your arrival. If you don't, you won't get far here. If you stay here long enough, Berlin will plant a kiss on your forehead and show you its less rude side."
(automatically translated)

The kiss may come, but surely the blow comes. It comes in the form of a racist attack on the novel's protagonist, who is addressed in the text as You. In his moves across Berlin, this You initially feels less of the "rude side" and not so much of that "black gravity" that, according to the text, always grips a person with dark skin as soon as he leaves his apartment. The You settles into Berlin, roams the districts, strolls, plays soccer with friends, takes his cousin to the Wannsee, goes out to dinner and on dates, which are not always successful, because at some point bisexuality comes up, a diffuse problem for potential partners of either sex.

(On 3th of June in @BallhausPrinzenallee there will be a reading with Musa Okwonga, and also some context readings by actors. They read from Isherwood, Rankine and Morrison, all recommended by Musa Okwonga)

The Berlin cakes, on the other hand, are convincing, despite the icing (Zuckerguss), and he is always on the trail of the moments of tension in everyday life that can be used as impressions for the growing readership in social media. It goes without saying that these Berlin impressions, also captured by cell phone camera, are transformed into stylish descriptive art in the novel text. Here, Okwonga's Neuberliner novel successfully stays in the tradition of the flâneur, offering exciting glimpses of the city for the Oldberliner as well. The main interest, however, is aroused by the psychological journey of exploration, a self-analysis inflected in the du, which deals increasingly oppressively with depression, loneliness, fears of failure, and social deprivation.

The artist's self-doubt gnaws at him; he can't even afford a trip to London when his rich friends celebrate their fortieth there; it drags down, but it never quite drags the reader down. Poetic interventions of this sort make sure of that:
"Thank God for Berlin. Here you can sink into equally lonely people, one night after another; into their arms, their beds. Sometimes, if you welcome them sufficiently, they will look around, lower their voices, then pull a tightly crumpled handkerchief out of one of their pockets, slowly unfold it, and show you the sparkling fragments inside. Look, they will say. This has been broken. Once they do, you will very likely never see them again. You also carry your balled-up handkerchief around with you, deep in your stomach, and every month when loneliness sets in, it feels like the handkerchief has been stolen. A theft for which you are grateful."

The novel is a journey in three parts - part one: a migrant from London moves through Berlin in search of his place in the world and finds himself, but the I is a trauma. Part two - he embarks on an inner journey with an African psychologist, which ends up confronting him with voodoo. Part three - he travels to Uganda, where the wounds of his family history open up in view of the political tragedy of the 1990s - cue Idi Amin, and of the continued dictatorship - cue Yoweri Museveni.

The arduous self-examination redeems, but it does not redeem without rest. The burden of history lies as heavily on this You as the "black gravity" of racism in Berlin. Self-awareness is possible in the mirror of the social, and this Neuberliner novel shows us drastically what that can be in Berlin right now, for a person of color. But to the You in the novel, "The Berlin Blow" holds a concrete lesson - depression and self-loathing are not grounded in the individual. "In The End, It Was All About Love" is a true story, a real New Berlin novel of our time. What is convincing here is the choice of the "You" form, because in the outside view of the reflection we get deep into the abysses of a radical self-exploration, it is that of a "stranger in Berlin" who in the end will arrive at another self.

Berlin is not Germany is the opening chapter, which may well be true, but unfortunately it now has some of that "rude" Germany in which "strangers" and especially People of Color live dangerously. It is the worst trend of the time, a visitor from London says something similar in the novel: "London is not England, which is changing a lot, but London is changing too". It is a great merit of this novel to put a finger in this European wound.

And here some of my creative posters to the context readings, which will take place before the main act with Musa Okwonga on 3th of June in Ballhaus Prinzenallee, Prinzenallee 33, 13359 Berlin Tickets here: https://www.eventim-light.com/de/a/63b55e5b87311c0660cf4ec1/e/645273b8d0c3b3664d9fd38d: