Zandschow

Bengt Claasen is sitting in his car, all his earthly possessions in the boot. In front of him, on the dashboard, sits the collar that belonged to his deceased dog. Wherever it falls down, he is going to stop and start a new life. He drives as slowly and carefully as he can and eventually, he reaches Zandschow – a tiny village in the far north with a fire-fighting pond as its centre.

He quickly realises: The villagers follow a strict weekly plan, on Thursdays, for example, twenty plastic swans are set adrift on the pond and they celebrate festivals underneath artificial palm trees in their »lagoon«. And anyway: The people here no longer put up with the precarious conditions way out in the sticks. Their Zandschow is Zanzibar, you can be a pauper here and still live like a king, amongst a lot of craziness.

With imagination running wild and a lot of humour Zandschow tells the story of a solidary community that pulls itself up by its own bootstraps – defiant and stubborn, free and independent. He creates a utopia within our globalised present and finds a language for it that is compellingly musical.

»Kunst creates a montage, works with the linguistic material, takes phrases and puts them into new contexts, whirls them through a narrative kaleidoscope that picks up new material with every turn.« Roman Lach, Die Zeit

»Thomas Kunst is a fearless outsider of the country’s literary scene, a berserker of imaginative tenderness.« Carsten Otte, taz. die tageszeitung

»In a literary scene that is currently dominated by plain language, emphasis and appeals, such an enigmatic, playful, atmospheric novel is [...] a welcome anomaly.« Oliver Jungen, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

»... the power of language captures the readers’ eyes. Thomas Kunst constructs his sentences like an incantation […] He narrates in circles and loops, at times repeating what has just been said as though in song […] How suddenly [the repetitions] come, how they transgress the narrative levels, as though this was a dance that takes you through several rooms.« Cornelia Geissler, Berliner Zeitung

»As charmingly funny as the novel often is, it is just as sad. The tragicomical absurdity of the human existence is awoken as a tragicomical, absurd piece of literature.« Steffen Georgi, Leipziger Volkszeitung

»It is a firework of imagination and wit that never fails to make you laugh yourself to tears ...« Tomas Gärtner, Dresdner Neueste Nachrichten

»It’s not the narrative realism that dominates contemporary literature, but the stubbornness of language and the flurry of associations that are the driving force behind this fascinating novel.« Wiener Zeitung

»The novel Zandschow is refreshingly different from the bitter-serious sound of contemporary literature; it is autonomous, quirky, funny and serious.« Thomas Schaefer, Die Rheinpfalz

»Kunst crosses poetic borders masterfully ...« Michael Braun, Deutschlandfunk

»Thomas Kunst finds a suitable language for the precarious existence of his protagonists, for their not being anchored in the world of the bourgeoisie and for their erratic way of thinking and feeling. The fact that the clique in Zandschow almost incidentally becomes a reflection of our ›angry‹ society makes this novel a fascinating […] piece of art.« Rainer Moritz, MDR