‘Ich freue mich, dass ich geboren bin’ (‘You Would Have Missed Me’) by Birgit Vanderbeke (Review)

After a week in Japan, with stories new and old, it’s time for a change of destination in our Women in Translation Month travels as we head off to Germany. It’s the 1960s, and the economy is booming, meaning there are plenty of opportunities for those new to the country, including recent arrivals from across the German-German border. Yet things aren’t always rosy in ‘the promised land’, and for one young girl in particular, as we’ll see, life in the west isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. ***** Birgit Vanderbeke’s Ich freue mich, dass ich geboren bin (available from Peirene Press in Jamie Bulloch’s translation as You Would Have Missed Me) is the story of a seven-year-old girl living in the heart of West Germany in the 1960s. Having been born in the East, she was one night taken across the border by her mother, away from her grandmother and the comfortable home she was accustomed to. Now, after several moves, and extended stays in settlement camps, she lives in a small apartment with her…