Pando

Pando is an adventure novel, taking readers on a journey from the Ruhr region of western Germany to the West Coast of the US, from London Bridge to the Niger Delta, from Bolivia to Xinjiang.

Pando is also the name of a clonal colony of the quaking aspen tree in Utah – the largest living organism in the world. Our heroes buy themselves a Honda and set out to find the tree.

Looking in different directions, Enis Maci and Pascal Richmann move toward each other through their writing. They encounter hollowed-out landscapes, contradictory founding myths, and stories that span the entire globe. A Mormon searching for the treasure of Moctezuma in the Utah desert. A murderous pharmacist building a waterslide in his backyard. A filmmaker chasing down a fugitive burglar.

Meanwhile, Pando is dying. The construction of a new road may have severed the root system, turning one living being into two. Can we trust our memories? Why is the weather so good? And what is the danger that holds us together?
 

»This cleverly composed text, whose numerous mirrors reflect a cognitive light that is at times blinding, gathers together all manner of curiosities.« Björn Hayer, Rolling Stone

»Pando achieves something big: … Enis Maci and Pascal Richmann find for their couple a stance of attentiveness – and they do so in an era in which we tend to put up barriers around ourselves. The characters, which increasingly meld in to a single self, are empathetic in their observations, but not naïve; they are devoted to the world, but do not surrender to it helplessly.« Samuel Hamen, Deutschlandfunk Kultur

»The countless divides that are bridged in Pando – the Atlantic, the Mediterranean, the Ruhr Region, national borders, the Venetian canals of Las Vegas, the threshold of the aliens’ office – ultimately lead to the crossing of the most insurmountable of all clefts between people: speechlessness.« Marius Goldhorn, Das Wetter

»A lucid, poetic survey of our present moment at the end of the Anthropocene.« Anja Kümmel, Weser Kurier

»But Pando is also a novel about love. And when are our senses more honed than when we are in this state?« Daniel Graf, Republik

»A book like a breathing organism.« Eva Behrendt, Theater heute