Sunday book pick: In ‘The Others’, immigrants’ fates hang in the balance as the Berlin Wall teeters
· Scroll
Visit afsport.lat for more information.
“And it’s always at this point, the point of change, that we must take greatest care.”
The most important incident in Sheena Kalayil’s novel, The Others, takes place in the first few pages. Lolita and Armando find a young man’s body during their visit to the beach. It is believed that he drowned in an attempt to escape to Denmark from the Deutsche Demokratische Republik (DDR). Who this man is or what his real motive to leave the DDR might be, is not known.
A rock and a hard place
Lolita and Armando have only recently known each other. She’s 23 and he is in his early thirties. She is an Indian, training to be a doctor while Armando is from Mozambique, working at a factory. Lolita has led a sheltered, upper-class life in India while Armando has a three-year-old daughter Clara with his former partner, Petra. They’re both “outsiders” in DDR but Armando is an “immigrant” and Lolita is an “expat.” The class difference and who the host countries prefers better is well understood by these differing terms. Nevertheless, neither “belongs” here and they know that their discovery of the body is rife with danger. The situation in DDR is hard – a hardline Communist government, restricted...