The Invention of Curried Sausage is an ingenious, revealing, and delightful novel about the invention of a popular German sidewalk food.
Uwe Timm has heard claims that currywurst first appeared in Berlin in the 1950s, but he seems to recall having eaten it much earlier, as a boy in his native Hamburg, at a stand owned and operated by Lena Brucker.
He decides to check it out.
Although the discovery of curried sausage is eventually explained, it is its prehistory - about how Lena Brucker met, seduced and held captive a German deserter in Hamburg, in April, 1945, just before the war's end-that is the tastiest part.
Timm draws gorgeous details from Lena's fine-grained recollections, and the pleasure these provide her and the reader supply the tale's real charm.
New Directions Publishing Corporation The invention of curried sausage, paperback/uwe timm
