»Jan Brandts enorm kluges und überwältigend anregendes Buch ist das Buch der Stunde.«
Gerhard Matzig, Süddeutsche Zeitung
JAN BRANDT
EIN HAUS AUF DEM LAND. Von einem der zurückkam, um seine Heimat zu finden. EINE WOHNUNG IN DER STADT. Von einem der auszog, um anzukommen/
A HOUSE IN THE COUNTRYSIDE. About someone who returned to find the home he came from /A FLAT IN THE CITY. About someone who left to arrive/ return
Ca. 320 pages; Spring 2019
A story about the loss of home and the end of urban utopia.
About someone who left to return. About someone who returned to find the home he came from.
How do we want to live – and how?
Jan Brandt’s new book is really two books in one because it is about two things that can’t exist without each other, city and country, flat and house, utopia and home. Two sides of the same coin that define our lives as well as our thoughts and emotions.
In ‘A House in the Countryside’, Jan Brandt takes us to his home village of Ihrhove in East Frisia, where his great-grandfather’s house is now scheduled for demolition. The new owner sees no reason to preserve the old, particularly since something new could increase the profit many times. The author is threatened with the loss of the place he calls home, and takes up the fight to save the house that embodies his roots.
Things aren’t looking much better in Berlin, the place Jan Brandt escaped to from provincial life in the early 90s: He is threatened to be kicked out of his rented flat. The reason: the owner claims he needs it for his own personal use. And unfor-tunately he finds that even Berlin, the once anti-capitalistic utopia, has been transformed into a snake pit where renters would – and have to – do almost anything for an affordable flat.
No matter if city or countryside: Jan Brandt approaches these subjects in the same way he always does, as an excellent observer, a smart essayist, an outstanding liter-ary author, telling about the abyss of our times.