The latest addition to my website is Wolfgang Hilbig‘s Das Provisorium (The Interim). This novel tells the story of C. He had been a good East German, working in a factory and then, at the age of forty, became a full-time writer. He eventually gets a visa to spend a year in West Germany, leaving his live-in girlfriend and mother. Much of his money is made from book tours, which he hates, rarely seeing the city but hanging out near the railway stations, which symbolise the journey home. He does go home a few times but when his visa expires and he has not applied for renewal, he is more or less stuck in West Germany and cannot really cope, feeling he belongs to neither country. He turns to drink and pornography, failing in relationships and moving to a different city, always on an interim basis. A sad but superbly written story of man who has lost his way.