Lenz in Lebanon

Between Europe and the Middle East, between self-abandonment and war: Lenz in the 21st century

In Georg Büchner’s novella, the writer Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz withdraws himself from the world as he is only able to cope with his despair when it’s upside down. The writer in Albert Ostermaier’s new novel, also named Lenz, is fleeing the establishment – at the same time, Lenz is addicted to being online constantly, to being mentioned. He discovers Beirut for himself, a city that promises a solution and thus an end to the life crisis impacting his work. Yet Beirut is the city of contradictions, of ambiguity, and, in that way, an example for a future. Lenz sees and feels all of this when he wanders through the city in 2014: he is caught in the crossfire between oppositions and flees into the ruins, is caught between love and hate and flees into the twilight; he remembers the civil war, scenes he cannot have experienced, and nightmares that he sought to escape.

In his new novel, Albert Ostermaier explores the current kaleidoscope of violent eruptions within individuals and between those in power in the most terrifying detail. To experience and to process them in writing is the task of the author. Albert Ostermaier’s Lenz in Lebanon tells of the daily routine and the yearning of an author in its fast-paced rhythm that intertwines the bloody reality with metaphorical explorations.