The hero of this novel, Adam Sladek, is a successful writer, albeit for a very enigmatic work. A writing...
A writer seeks to prove that politics, science and art can only lead to something when they acknowledge the prized place that poetry holds. His opponent wants to prove that poetry does not exist at all. Dietmar Dath’s new novel is the story of the hunt for words that have the power to inspire sadness or happiness. And he does not come away empty handed.
The hero of this novel, Adam Sladek, is a successful writer, albeit for a very enigmatic work. A writing assignment leads him to explore the depths of Greek mythology and writing from late antiquity. By way of payment, his employer, who is a very wealthy philanthropist, promises him not only a large sum of money, but also to publish Sladek's entire body of poetry. His work conditions are excellent; Sladek is secluded in the lap of luxury while his studies are furnished with the best aesthetic fare in film, photography and books. He is taken aback by some of the things he finds. Is the young huntress he encounters a reincarnation of the infamous daring aviator Amelia Earhart (as she herself seems to believe) or an avatar of Artemis? His suspicion that something of an entirely different nature is at the root of his assignment grows. His employer wields power that puts Sladek's life in danger.
Persons
OTHER PUBLICATIONS
Unfortunately, I’m Dead
Maybe there is a god after all. What if he doesn’t like us?
A German movie director flees from an exhausting love affair. His sister is suspected by the government of being a radical Islamist planning an attack. His best friend from childhood days is a priest fighting the devil. And a woman who knows all three of them, but is more than a mere human, opens the door to the...
Feldeváye
It has been relegated to the past – made obsolete by technologies of possibility that people could not imagine when they still lived on Earth. Now they have settled many worlds and encountered many intelligent life forms.
But on the remote planet of Feldeváye art comes back – in the form of a gift from an alien species. A young girl, Kathrin...
Pedigree Collapse
Tomorrow, everything is going to be better: Since the Age of Enlightenment, this slogan identifies disciples of social progress, while those of the dark ages bark about how everything was better in the olden days. Some bank on science and technology to enhance freedom, wealth, education, and beauty, others on tradition, blood, land, family, fatherland, and other such ancestral chatter so that...
Rosa Luxemburg
Dietmar Dath, »the most productive and most radical writer in Germany« (Thomas Lindemann, Die Welt) on the revolutionary democrat Rosa Luxemburg.
Denmark (Rosenkilde)
Winter of Machines
Turkey (Yazilama Yayinevi)
The Abolition of Species
US paperback edition (DoppelHouse), Italy (Nero Editions), Serbia (VBZ), Turkey (Is Kültür)
Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: English world rights (Seagull)
Weapon Weather
Russia (Text)
No Conference Today
»I only produce shit nowadays,« reads a diary entry by Arno Schmidt, meaning: journalistic texts for newspapers. Since 1990, Dietmar Dath has published heaps of – well: journalistic, satirical, and essayistic texts and by doing so has created his very own fan base.
Like very few others, he manages to connect Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Bourdieu, pop culture to...
Dirac
Greece (Melani)
Saltwhite Eyes
»Dear Sonja,« David writes in these enlightening and desperate letters to a revered classmate from days long gone, »looking back isn’t always the best idea: Then the Lord rained down burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah—from the Lord out of the heavens. Thus he overthrew those cities and the entire plain, destroying all those living in the cities—and also the vegetation in the land. But Lot’s...