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As the title indicates, Die Rückkehr der Kurzhosengang (The Mysterious Return of the Short Ones) is a sequel to a previously published book, Die Kurzhosengang (The Mysterious Adventures of the Short Ones), which was awarded the 2005 German Youth Literature Prize in the category of children’s book.
Zoran Drvenkar, who concealed his authorship behind the pseudonym of an author duo Victor Caspak and Yves Lanois, presents the book as a translation from Canadian English. He retained some ideas from the first book and abandoned others; for example, the present sequel no longer has any footnotes by the supposed translator, which makes the book flow much more smoothly. As in the first book, the story is told by the four members of the Short Ones gang, supplemented by police records from the questioning of members of their rival gang.
It is not necessary to be familiar with the story of the preceding book in order to understand Die Rückkehr der Kurzhosengang, but it helps. The setting is Okkerville, a small town in the Canadian province of Ontario, where everyone knows everyone else. In this microcosm, the Short Ones have achieved hero status after their adventures from the first book. Such a distinction of course breeds envy, especially that of the five boys who are all named Pauli and are either mean or brutal or both at once and together make up the notorious Pauli Gang.
The sudden disappearance of Cement, one of the Short Ones, triggers an exciting search. His friends Iceland, Rudolpho, and Snickers follow up numerous leads, encountering a lot of strange things in their city that they were previously unaware of. One of the Paulis is constantly getting in their way, so they presume it was probably the Pauli Gang that kidnapped Cement. Various clues lead the pursuers onto all kinds of trails, and each chapter is devoted to a different boy’s report on the events from his own perspective and with his own individual emphasis. Little by little a highly complex story unfolds, which is not clarified until the last chapter, when Cement tells his story of the events: He was not abducted at all!
The irony of the story, however, is the fact that at least three people in the city had in fact commissioned the Pauli Gang to kidnap Cement, since they hoped to benefit from a very special ability of his. He is able to speak with the spirits of those who have died, and since these spirits always appear a few days before the death, he can therefore see who is going to die soon. But in the transition from life to death things don’t always go as smoothly as planned, and Cement sometimes has to negotiate between the living and their spirits. The simultaneity of the presumed kidnapping and one of Cement’s spirit rescue operations leads to this extremely turbulent and intricate plot, the different strands of which all come together for a happy ending.
Zoran Drvenkar has once again succeeded in writing a clever book full of witty ideas, which fascinates children and adult readers alike without falling into the fairytale worlds of fantasy novels or the artificially “cool” pseudo–youth language of the Wild Soccer Bunch. Drvenkar draws from his inexhaustible reservoir of fantasy and his ability to tell a complex story that is consistent and that works, that has nothing to do with reality and yet reminds readers of their own childhood. This talent makes him one of Germany’s most significant writers of children’s and young people’s books.
Heike Friesel
March 2007
[Translated by Allison Brown]
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