The New Book

Ten years after Rafael Horzon’s successful autobiography The White Book not much has been reported about the former darling of Berlin’s intelligentsia. It’s become too quiet, in his opinion. And so, he brings himself to try once more: With a new book, he wants to set himself up as the most important intellectual of the 21st century; indeed, even finally win the much longed-for Nobel Prize. But he can’t think of anything to write about.

Starting from this simple idea, Rafael Horzon conjures up a true masterpiece that is sometimes gloomy but mostly incredibly funny and on top of that, every single word of this insane story is true …

An intelligent and light-hearted book about friendship, death, life and love.

»Not that long ago, Berlin-Mitte seemed like the centre of the universe, today one could hardly think of a less important place: Rafael Horzon, the last German Romantic, expertly uses this tension to create literature.« Andreas Rosenfelder, DIE WELT

»With his second novel Rafael Horzon shows that there is still a lot of potential in an aesthete’s existence.« Jan Wiele, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

»As unlikely as it is that this feigned creation ex nihilo works – in a similar style to the one in 2010 at that – as surprising is it that it […] actually does.« Martin Conrads, taz. die tageszeitung

»[...] a wonderful [and topical] update of German pop literature.« WELT AM SONNTAG

»Cheerful irony from the hunting grounds of meta pop literature.« Marc Reichwein, Die literarische Welt

»No provisions are made in capitalism for futility and carelessness. Horzon couldn’t care less about that, which probably constitutes the unusual appeal of his autobiographical writings.« Jakob Hayner, neues deutschland

»[...] a wonderful commentary on fact and fiction, irony, extremely sad, profound meaning.« Nicole Gombek, Stuttgarter Zeitung

»The ease [Horzon] displays has an impressively tense relationship to the richness of allusions, to the intellectual penetration of this amusing story. Beyond that, he shows that German entertainment can manage without schadenfreude.« Jan Drees, Deutschlandfunk