Now

Karl Heinz Bohrer is one of Germany’s most pugnacious intellectuals. The steadfast expectation that the banal present will turn into the fantastical now – this is what drives Karl Heinz Bohrer’s autobiographical, adventure-filled story. Spanning more than five decades and unfolding through nine chapters, his story plays out in various locales: in European cities like London and Paris, at German and American universities, on essayistic as well as scientific terrain. And ever and again upon the stage of relationships: with women, with friends, with colleagues and adversaries, this is as much of an intellectual adventure as it is an empirical examination of the erotic.

Bohrer consistently tells his tale not from the point of view of the all-knowing one looking back over his life, but from the perspective of actual experience, which is forever tied to time: and it is only through such that the singular originality of his observations, images and judgements on their collision course with those systems in which presence fades into pure utopianism becomes all the more clear.

Karl Heinz Bohrer’s text is unacademic, passionate, without any false sentimentality, resolute and humble.

»An unexpected stroke of luck for the history of the German mind, all too well-behaved nowadays.« Alexander Cammann, Die Zeit

»This is, to put it simply, an electrifying book.« Mark Siemons, Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung

»When Karl Heinz Bohrer is in top form, one has no choice but to be an astonished witness … Writing about his private and academic life, this highly talented artist of mood has written a memoir whose main point is: to neither separate the one from the other.« Michael Krüger, Literatur Spiegel April 2017

»Karl Heinz Bohrer remains a singular figure among German academics ... « Thomas Steinfeld, Süddeutsche Zeitung