December Book Club Meet-up: The Invention of Curried Sausage

The theme for December will be Germany, we will be reading The Invention of Curried Sausage by Uwe Timm , and we will be eating at Walzwerk in the Mission.
This book was recommended as a favorite of one of our regular members. It has been on our to-read list for awhile, but the book was out of stock or out of print until recently. It is now available again, and I heard rumours that it was recently reviewed in the Economist so may be available in bookstores, or it may need to be ordered.

Reviews on the book

From Booklist
This clever novel tells the story of how curried sausage (a popular German street food) was created. The narrator is convinced that the delicacy was invented in his native Hamburg sometime during or after World War II, not in Berlin in the 1950s, as is commonly believed. His faint memories from childhood lead him to Lena Bruckner, the curried-sausage street vendor of his youth. He finds her living in a retirement home, and through a series of interviews, she slowly reveals the story behind the creation of curried sausage. And what a story it is! Weaving wartime intrigue, clandestine love affairs, black-market subterfuge, and life during the Nazi era, Lena's story traces the development of the sausage while simultaneously mapping the effects of such diverse elements as war, love, and abandonment on the human spirit. A best-seller in Germany, this highly entertaining, powerful work will dazzle American readers. Kathleen Hughes --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Amazon Review Description
An ingenious, revealing, and charming tale about the invention of a popular German sidewalk food by a woman who met, seduced, and held captive a deserter in April, 1945, just before the war's end. 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 Brucker. He decides to check it out. Although the discovery of curried sausage is eventually explained, it is its prehistory - about how Lena Brcker 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.