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Irish Times
17 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Sister Europe by Nell Zink: A novel driven almost entirely by dialogue
Sister Europe Author : Nell Zink ISBN-13 : 978-0241740804 Publisher : Viking Guideline Price : £14.99 Nell Zink's Sister Europe is a slim, crackling novel that compresses an astonishing amount of life into just 190 pages. Set over a single, increasingly unhinged night in Berlin, it follows a ragtag constellation of characters: Demian, a jaded art critic; his 15-year-old trans daughter, Nicole; a cynical American expat; a suicidal heiress; a suspicious undercover cop; and a listless Arab prince. Brought together by a tedious literary gala at the Hotel Intercontinental, the group is propelled into the city's charismatic nightlife by alcohol and a hunger for connection. This is a novel driven almost entirely by dialogue; aphoristic, brittle, often dazzling. 'Life is all about raising expectations and seeing them crushed,' one character remarks. 'Life is an excruciating phase in the life of everyone.' The wit is real, but grows wearying. Zink's characters all speak and think in the same mordant register, which soon begins to feel like ventriloquism. The prose fizzles, but rarely deepens. The emotional pitch remains static, and the narrative draws to an anticlimactic ending: the characters simply drift away, back into their separate lives, largely unchanged. READ MORE The experience is familiar to anyone who's stayed out until dawn in Berlin: a blur of charm and strangeness that, once the sun rises, begins to feel insubstantial, even faintly depressing. Sister Europe succeeds and fails on precisely this point. It captures too well the intoxicated logic of these repeating nights: their momentum, their allure, and their descent into meaninglessness. At one point, Zink brings her characters to a Burger King, where their enthusiasm wilts under bright lighting. Like most anecdotes of drunken shenanigans, it's amusing in the moment but ultimately forgettable. Still, Zink's writing has an obvious intelligence that makes her flaws appear at least partly intentional. It's tempting to view the novel as diagnostic. Perhaps she is less interested in telling a story than in mapping a mood, one of stylish drift and emotional inertia. Her characters are fluent in irony and cushioned by privilege. They find themselves spiritually deadened by an excess of false freedoms. If the novel feels empty at the centre, that may be the point. Sister Europe is a portrait of a world where everything is permitted, so nothing matters.
The Guardian
26-04-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Sister Europe by Nell Zink review – all the ideas Trump deems most dangerous
On 7 March 2025 the New York Times published a list of words that the Trump administration was systematically culling from government documents and educational materials. This list, which includes the words 'gender ideology', 'affirming care', 'confirmation bias', 'ethnicity', 'identity', 'immigrants', 'racism', 'prostitute', 'political', 'intersectional' and 'privilege', reads like a bingo card for Nell Zink's astonishingly prescient new novel, Sister Europe, in which a large cast of racially, economically and gender-diverse characters convene over the course of a single evening to attend a literary awards ceremony in Berlin. On its surface, Sister Europe is a comedy of manners set among Berlin's exclusive and elusive cultural elite. The prose is searingly quick, revelatory and funny: Zink's dialogue reads like our best plays. Entertaining banter could be this book's largest trophy, were it not for the contents of the banter, which are so ambitious and ethically interested that they make it clear that Zink is one of our most important contemporary writers. Like the film classic My Dinner with Andre, in Sister Europe the interactions between characters are vehicles through which philosophical quandaries are explored. However, while the questions in My Dinner with Andre are largely posed in the abstract, here they are shockingly specific. For example, Demian, a German art critic, struggles to reconcile his admiration for the Arabic writer being honoured, Masud, with racist elements in Masud's writing: On reading [Masud's] books, Demian discovered to his consternation a grating and persistent anti-Black racism. Was it excusable? He excused it, on the grounds that it would be hard for an anti-Black racist to do much damage in Norway, where anti-Muslim racism was a deadly threat (admittedly much of it intersectional, directed against Somalis). Was it patronising to suspend his ethical standards because the man was a genius, or Eurocentric not to suspend them, and which was worse? In this way, Zink repeatedly names systems of power without being moralistic. She is simultaneously stringent and funny, which is disarming. Humour is one of our best tools for processing extreme violence: Zink knows this, and accordingly deploys her singular wit throughout. Over the course of the evening, Zink's characters vocalise their desires, fears and prejudices. Nothing, including narrating from the consciousness of an economically privileged 15-year-old trans girl who tries her hand at streetwalking, is off limits. The most working-class character in the book is an Israel-loving antisemitic German cop who takes bribes from pimps but also delivers an exacting critique of the decriminalisation of prostitution under the Social Democratic-Green German government in 2002. In this way, Zink endows each of her characters with both moral high grounds and glaring blind spots. In Sister Europe, as in life, who is the oppressed and who is the oppressor is not fixed. The ever-shifting flow of social and sexual power between the characters is nerve-racking and tantalising: there are no saints and no demons. Though her work is rarely discussed in the context of politics, Zink is one of our most ambitious and explicitly political writers. Here she shows us that the Trump administration's embargoed words are not weapons, but questions. Nothing is more dangerous to a dictator than someone who can anticipate, and therefore interrogate, their actions. Sister Europe performs an intellectually rigorous interrogation of the ideas the Trump administration deems most dangerous, all the while dressed in the outfit of an extravagant Hermes-clad literary gala. While this is a novel of ideas, the narrative is never cold or cerebral. It's beautifully felt, and emotionally open-handed. I wanted love and joy for each of the 13 main characters, which the book (surprisingly!) delivers. As the long night is coming to an end, and morning is threatening to creep over the winter streets of Berlin, Zink's large cast pairs off and an unlikely couple trade pillow talk: Sign up to Bookmarks Discover new books and learn more about your favourite authors with our expert reviews, interviews and news stories. Literary delights delivered direct to you after newsletter promotion He whispered hesitantly, speaking into the towel over her ear, 'You want to change your life.' 'That was stupid,' she replied. 'Life should change me. I don't want to be destructive of a living thing, flattening it with my identity.' She said the word slowly. As though identities were something ubiquitous, but distasteful, like dust mites, that might be dispensed with, given careful hygiene. This book is not a rejection of identity politics, but a plea for the possibility of an evolving self; a bid against inner stagnancy. Like Erasure by Percival Everett, Sister Europe addresses the claustrophobia that can accompany an identity. No character, real or imagined, enjoys being flattened. Rita Bullwinkel's novel Headshot is published by Daunt. Sister Europe by Nell Zink is published by Viking (£14.99). To support the Guardian buy a copy at Delivery charges may apply.
The Guardian
20-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Sister Europe by Nell Zink review – ramshackle wanderers in Berlin
California-born, Berlin-based Nell Zink is an idiosyncratic writer. You never quite know where her sentences are going to go. 'Oh God, Toto, you won't believe what just happened,' says Avianca, a character in her new novel. 'This angel stole my hat. Like a winged monkey. It was blue and kind of glowing and had feather wings.' Such delightfully surprising lines are frequent in Sister Europe, Zink's seventh novel, which follows acclaimed titles The Wallcreeper, Doxology and Avalon, and is set over the course of a Tuesday night in 2023. The setting is a ceremony for an Arabic literary prize, held at a hotel in Berlin. The ensemble cast includes Demian, a German art critic; Nicole, his transgender daughter; Toto, an American-born publisher; Avianca, Toto's date, nicknamed 'the Flake' because she tends to cancel on plans; Livia, who lives in a glass house built by her Nazi great-uncle; and Radi, an Arab prince and the grandson of the prize's organiser. No one is particularly pleased to be there. The speeches drag and, it being a Muslim event, there isn't even any alcohol to help pass the time. The ramshackle group end up wandering the streets of the city, finding themselves at a party in the subway, and then at a Burger King. The conversation is as meandering as their route, taking in anti-Nazi activists – 'Sophie Scholl was hot,' Nicole says – and why 'beef is trans'. All evening, they are trailed by Klaus, an undercover police officer, who spotted Nicole loitering in the red-light district earlier and suspects she is a victim of trafficking. Zink's narration is cool, her humour is dry and her dialogue is convincing. But the promise of her characters' quirkiness doesn't in the end add up to much. Despite its early intrigue, the story feels disappointingly quiet by the end. 'Life is all about raising expectations and seeing them crushed,' thinks Toto early on. A thought that fits Sister Europe too. Sister Europe by Nell Zink is published by Viking (£14.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at Delivery charges may apply
Washington Post
24-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
In ‘Sister Europe,' witty conversation is action enough
'Sister Europe,' the compact and spiky new novel from Nell Zink, begins late on a Tuesday afternoon in Berlin and ends at 4 the following morning. Only a recluse, though, would mistake what happens here for a wild night on the town. Set in 2023, the novel's main events are a literary awards ceremony and a trip to a Burger King. Sure, one character gets drunk on wine and another contemplates buying cocaine, but this novel's drug of choice is unfiltered conversation laced with wit and desperation. Zink makes sure there is enough for everyone.
New York Times
24-03-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
One Exhilarating, Excruciating Night in Nell Zink's Berlin
There's a moment in J.D. Salinger's short story 'Teddy,' in which a boy watches his younger sister drink a glass of milk. He describes this vision as God 'pouring God into God.' Nell Zink's new novel, 'Sister Europe,' ends with a moment so lambent — but it takes one excruciating, tangled, exhilarating, humiliating night to get us there. Many novels take place over the course of a single day: Virginia Woolf's 'Mrs. Dalloway,' James Joyce's 'Ulysses,' Nicholson Baker's 'The Mezzanine.' Fewer chart the course of a single evening, as does 'Sister Europe' — although Haruki Murakami's 'After Dark' is another that comes to mind. To stay out late in Zink's world, loitering, is a pleasure. If you don't know what her writing sounds like, the only word for it is Zinkish. Her voice is cool and fastidious, but she has a screwball quality — a comic sensibility rooted in pain. She grinds her own sophisticated colors as a writer; her ironies are finely tuned; she is uniquely alert to the absurdities of human conduct. If this doesn't happen to be among her finest novels, well, it has strong consolations. The events in 'Sister Europe' occur on a Tuesday night in 2023. The place: a mediocre luxury hotel in Berlin. The occasion: a second-rate literary award ceremony. A $54,000 prize for Arabic writing is being given to a Bedouin writer who sounds a good deal like Salman Rushdie. The Rushdie character comes in for some ribbing. One wit comments that he probably uses A.I. to churn out his wordy and florid fables. Few of the guests want to be there. The evening is drudgery. The speeches are too long, the food is execrable (one attendee calls the entree 'Michelin mystery meat') and no alcohol can be had because of the event's Muslim hosts and guests. The prevailing mood is: Get me out of here. Among this book's primary characters is Demian, a German art critic, who is married to an American structural engineer named Harriet. They have a 15-year-old daughter, Nicole, who is transitioning from male to female. To her father's surprise, Nicole turns up at the hotel with Demian's friend Toto, an American publisher. Toto had recognized Nicole, in a party dress and with bee-stung lips, posing as a streetwalker in a red-light district, and invited her to the event to get her off the corner. Harriet is calm about Nicole's transition and her desire to take puberty blockers. Demian is less sanguine. He has a liberal intellect but a conservative gut, and he has an instinct to protect her from decisions made in haste. He battles his transphobia, Zink writes, but 'clearly hoped Nicole would emerge from her gaudy chrysalis as just another twink in golf duds.' Nicole is carefully and vividly drawn. She's a bird shivering on a wire. She's in an awkward phase, but then who isn't at 15? Zink writes: Demian seems relatively unperturbed that his daughter was (apparently) streetwalking, and similarly unperturbed when she vanishes into the hotel with a sybaritic prince, Radi, who has sexual designs on her. No real sex takes place in this novel, though it's gently pervy, like Mr. Whipple squeezing the Charmin. A main topic in 'Sister Europe' is indeterminacy. All of us are between stages, this novel suggests, at every moment. Another main topic is Berlin and its discontents. Zink, who has lived in and around the city for many years, catalogs the ghosts that continue to haunt it. A drawback of this short novel is that it introduces too many characters; none quite sink in. 'Sister Europe' lacks the air of inevitability that a good novel has. It also lacks a sense of drama, not that the gifted Zink does not try to inject some. All evening, an undercover cop named Klaus is following Nicole, thinking she may be the victim of sex trafficking. He represents the Chekhovian gun that keeps threatening to go off. He's an oddly comic fellow. In a film version, he'd be portrayed by the wonderful Yuriy Borisov, who plays the fragile and sentimental hired muscle in 'Anora.' After the ceremony, the characters spill out onto Berlin's wet, chilly, windswept streets. The merry revelers — among them Demian, Nicole, Radi, Toto and a young woman nicknamed the Flake (whom Toto met on a dating app) — form a sexy caravan. People stop and stare. Zink has a way of rendering even a late-night walk indelible, as if each moment has been tapped with a sprinkle from Tinkerbell's wand: I won't spoil the ending. Suffice it to say that these characters, along with an intimidating poodle, end up together in a space that functions as a kind of black-box theater, one with Nazi associations. Bring your black turtleneck; you may briefly feel you are in an absurdist Wallace Shawn play. Some of the characters pair off. For others, it's a school night. The cop is outside looking in. Is he really a gentle screw-up? Or will that Chekhovian gun finally go off?
