Here is what German author/narrator Uwe Timm uncovers about a popular German sidewalk food, curried sausage. Convinced the delicacy did not originate in Berlin, Timm tracks down its creator, one Lena Brucker, now living in a retirement home. Thus the tale of how curried sausage came to be is the romantic story of Lena Brucker's life.
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 Brücker. He decides to check it out. Although the discovery of curried sausage is eventually explained, it is its prehistory - about how Lena Brücker 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.