Why it’s Germany calling for Michael and his book (From Gazette)

Why it’s Germany calling for Michael and his book

1:10pm Wednesday 25th January 2012 in Leisure By Neil D'Arcy-Jones

GERMANY is perhaps not the most likely place to fall in love with.

Don’t get me wrong, the Rhine Valley and the Black Forest, appear very nice, as do Munich, Berlin and Bavaria.

But when most people fall in love with a place, you expect it to be a little more romantic than a medium sized city 12km north of Stuttgart.

Yet that’s what Colchester author, Michael Dean, did when he went to live in Ludwigsburg in the Seventies.

In fact, he loved it so much it took him ten years to write his own love letter to the place, his new novel Magic City.

He smiles: “I wanted to get it right. This book is my homage to Germany, while playfully poking fun at it a little.

“Like the hero of my book, I had a wonderful time in the ‘Magic City’. I loved it and I love Germany.”

Magic City is Michael’s fourth novel set in Germany, but his first ‘out and out comedy’.

He adds: “The hero has issues with women and is burdened with his Jewish ancestry, so he invents a new identity for himself and has all these crazy adventures in the city of the title.

“It reflects what happened to me, but obviously exaggerated for comic effect.

“The hero of the book gets pursued by his employer, drug dealers and, at one point, even gets involved with the Baader-Meinhof terrorist group and a hunt for an old Nazi.

“I started this ten years ago and that was more to do with writing a comedy. It’s a very difficult genre to write and the novel has quite a bit of anarchic stuff going on, which was difficult to get right.

“It has been re-written quite a few times, but I’m very pleased with the finished work.”

While Magic City is Michael’s fourth novel, he is actually the author of more than 30 books.

Born in Chingford and raised in Walthamstow, Michael read history at Worcester College, Oxford, before taking an MSc in applied linguistics at Edinburgh University.

A fluent German speaker, it was Michael’s time spent in Germany during the Seventies that led to a career in writing text books for English Language Teaching.

Moving to Colchester in 1979, he has written more than 30 books for publishers such as Longman and Oxford University Press. He has even translated novels including Memoirs of a Geisha and 1984 into German for Penguin ELT.

He says: “That’s how I made my living, but after my daughter got through university, I could afford a lower income. So eventually I turned my hand to writing novels.

“My first book was Crooked Cross, which was also set in Germany, and I followed that up with Hirschfeld’s Friends, which was about the Jewish resistance in Amsterdam, and Thorn, which focuses on the philosopher Spinoza.

“I’m hoping to find a German publisher for Magic City and I would love to have a launch in Ludwigsburg.

“I’m sure the Germans would see it for what it is and that’s a homage to their wonderful country.

“There are a few German jokes in there about hypochondria and their fondness for cream cakes, but it’s a gentle teasing.”

Next up for Michael is another novel set in Germany, again reflecting on his Jewish background, and following the exploits of a Jewish family from the 1870s to 1950s.

He explains: “I want to explore the idea of Jews in Germany not as victims, as they are so often portrayed, but as instigators and prime movers.”

l Magic City is published in hardback by Book Guild Publishing on January 27 priced £16.99.