Park

Arnold, in his mid-twenties, travels from Berlin to Athens. During a stopover in Paris, he walks through the city, orders food, noted down poems, changes the wallpaper on his screen, and waits for Odile to text him.

And as the world around him keeps plunging further and further into crisis, due to climate change, terrorism, social injustice, he wonders what the news stories about that have to do with him. How dangerous is all of this really? And why does he feel so safe despite the violence and the threats? Even when he gets mixed up in a scuffle during a demonstration in Athens and the situation escalates – and even when power supplies cut out and he is trapped in a pitch-black hotel.

Park discusses the surface of our present. The novel shows us the omnipresence of catastrophes and unrests, along with the subjective defencelessness of a generation to whom the virtual is just as close as reality and that feels, for this very reason, all the more powerfully that there must be something more.

»How does a novel about life work in a time without love? Marius Goldhorn knows. […] [a] painfully truthful novel ...« Peter Praschl, Welt am Sonntag

»Goldhorn‘s wry sense of humour stems from an unbridled power of imagination and celebrates the absurd. […] Prose like this originates in a true free spirit and permits only a succinct conclusion: impressive!« Björn Hayer, Der Spiegel

»The radical persistence with which Marius Goldhorn sends his protagonist through love and contemporary events, digitally upgraded, is impressive.« Alexander Wasner, SWR2 Lesenswert

»[…] at times, Goldhorn is at his parodistic best, for example when he describes a prototypical hipster party, other times he accurately boils profound emotions down to an essence in his succinct, almost staccato-like, poetic style. […] A rare experience of joy.« Simon Hadler, ORF.at

»Park by Marius Goldhorn is a minor debut novel in German-language literature. But only at first glance. In reality, the book dares a lot with its new sound.« Felix Diewald, Radio FM4

»Park is a slender but particularly extraordinary monumental book. To me, it’s finally the hypertext we have been waiting for since the internet began.« Mascha Jacobs, detektor.fm

»The exciting aspect of the construction of Park is the way Goldhorn lets his protagonist participate in reality while at the same time he moves in his own artificial reality shaped by YouTube videos, games and references to pop culture – preferably Japanese instrumental music. The clear, simply structured sentences, in which he describes even the most ludicrous scenarios, results in a bizarre beauty.« Fabian Thomas, thedailyfrown.wordpress.de