TEHRAN – A new Persian translation of German writer Uwe Timm’s novel “The Snake Tree” by Hossein Tehrani has recently been published in Tehran.

Cheshmeh is the publisher of the book, in which Wagner’s luck changes and he becomes engulfed in a web of mayhem after running over an Acaray snake in South America.

A Persian translation of the book by Omid Ejtemaei Jandaqi was released by Ofoq in Tehran in 2010.

After working as a furrier, Timm studied philosophy and German in Munich and Paris, achieving a Ph.D. in German literature in 1971 with his thesis: The Problem of Absurdity in the Works of Albert Camus.

During his studies, Timm was engaged in leftist activities of the 1960s. He became a member of the Socialist German Student Union and was associated with Benno Ohnesorg. From 1973 to 1981, he was a member of the German Communist Party. 

He has also been a lecturer at universities in Paderborn, Darmstadt, Lüneburg and Frankfurt.

Timm started publishing in the early 1970s and became known to a larger audience in Germany after one of his children’s books, “Rennschwein Rudi Rüssel”, was turned into a movie. 

Today, he is one of the most successful contemporary authors in Germany. His books “Die Entdeckung der Currywurst” (“The Invention of Curried Sausage”) and “Am Beispiels meines Bruders” (“In My Brother’s Shadow”) can both be found on the syllabi of German schools.

His readers usually appreciate Timm’s writing style, which he himself calls “die Ästhetik des Alltags” (“the aesthetics of everyday life”).

Timm imitates everyday storytelling by using everyday vocabulary and simple sentences, and generally tries to imitate the way stories are orally told. 

His works often indirectly link with each other by taking up minor characters from one story and making this character the main character of another work. For example, a minor character like Frau Brücker from “Johannisnacht” is taken up as a main character in his book “Die Entdeckung der Currywurst”. 

His works also tend to have autobiographical features and often deal with the German past or are set in the German past.

Photo: Front cover of the Persian translation of German writer Uwe Timm’s novel “The Snake Tree”.

MMS/YAW