heute graben

Für mich wirklich ein Lesegenuss. Toll gezeichnete Charaktere. Fesselnder Schreibstil. Eine Story in der man sich verlieren kann. So muss ein Buch sein, abschalten vom Alltag und mittendrin statt nur dabei. Kann das Buch wärmstens empfehlen!

This novel is crafted as the diary of a lovesick undertaker who aims to become a writer, it's a smart parody and utterly original - plus it's in fact autofictional: Author Mario Schlembach, a writer and undertaker, has declared that this is a project of method writing. His underlying literary quest: In our world, self-presentation is everything - how can we interpret our lives as kitsch novels? In case you haven't guessed it: Of course this morbid, quirky text is Austrian and set in Vienna, the capital of death (you don't believe me, a German? Well, listen to Viennese actor Christoph Waltz as he explains it here).

Protagonist Mario is still longing for his lost love A, we follow him as he dates B to Z, burries numerous bodies, and has haunting dreams while trying to sell his book project about, sure, A. The text is structured in short vignettes, many of them ironic and meta. My hot take: The whole thing is a parody of the writing which was popular in the so-called Goethezeit, the literary period name after Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. We get extreme emotional overflow à la The Sorrows of Young Werther, but the love of nature is replaced by death and decay, and instead of a revered genius, we meet a man who keeps failing- "Sturm und Drang", electric boogaloo. And writing down dreams is peak German Romanticism. I love it.

There are also many direct literary references, but one man sticks out: Thomas Bernhard. Mario wants to write like him, but instead he contracts the lung disease that killed Bernhard. The text switches between love, death, illness, all those grave topics, but handles them with wit, care, and humor.

I want to see this nominated for the Austrian and the German Book Prize, because this is what I expect from young literature (and Schlembach's humor reminds me of the wonderful Timon Karl Kaleyta).