Raw Material

Book excerpt: 'They were all the same, communists, Nazis, parents, church, book reviews, features section, editorial, revolutionary struggle, Baader-Meinhof, capital, television, Club Voltaire, pacifism, guerrilla, Mao, Trotsky, Red Student Action, the underground scene and Germania Security. They were all part of the same idea, they knew how things ought to be, they had a monopoly on consciousness, love, human happiness.' In Raw Material Jörg Fauser casts an eye over the times he lived in and his own life: a junkie in Istanbul, the move to a commune in Berlin and a squat in Frankfurt, work on an underground magazine and unceasing efforts to get a novel published. The autobiographical testament of Fauser's alter ego Harry Gelb is an unsparing, razor-sharp but often lovingly ironic portrait of the 1960s and 70's. It is a portrait of the artist to rank with the best, and a portrait of the ferment of Europe at that time.