Ein Familien- und Gesellschaftsroman in den Zeiten der Corona-Pandemie
JOHN VON DÜFFEL
DIE WÜTENDEN UND DIE SCHULDIGEN /
THE ANGRY AND THE GUILTY
A Novel, ca. 300 pp.
Autumn 2021 – English sample available
A multi-layered family novel in times of Covid 19
Narrating the altered life – A family story in an extreme time
March 2020: A Protestant pastor in the Uckermark region who faces death. An anesthe-siologist at the Charité who gets quarantined together with a rabbi. An art student who is hopelessly in love with his professor and drifts into a world of narcotics. And Selma, the granddaughter, daughter and sister of the aforementioned, who is supposed to some-how hold together this family - no easy task in times of contact restrictions and social distancing rules, in which distance becomes a virtue and closeness a problem.
The four family members, torn apart, are connected less by similarity than by a common void: Holger, pastor's son, ex-husband and father of the protagonists is in a clinic after a suicide attempt and is now practically unreachable. For each of the characters, he means a gap, a phantom pain of a different kind. But Holger is not the only absent per-son, who is much more present in the lives of the family members than they are ready to admit. More and more this extreme time brings the disappeared - living as well as dead - into light like under a burning glass, and with them the stories of anger and guilt appear.
John von Düffel ties in this dense novel the issues of our time to broader questions: on the relationship between man and nature, on belonging and isolation, on living and dying in times of a pandemic.
DIE WÜTENDEN UND DIE SCHULDIGEN /
THE ANGRY AND THE GUILTY
A Novel, ca. 300 pp.
Autumn 2021 – English sample available
A multi-layered family novel in times of Covid 19
Narrating the altered life – A family story in an extreme time
March 2020: A Protestant pastor in the Uckermark region who faces death. An anesthe-siologist at the Charité who gets quarantined together with a rabbi. An art student who is hopelessly in love with his professor and drifts into a world of narcotics. And Selma, the granddaughter, daughter and sister of the aforementioned, who is supposed to some-how hold together this family - no easy task in times of contact restrictions and social distancing rules, in which distance becomes a virtue and closeness a problem.
The four family members, torn apart, are connected less by similarity than by a common void: Holger, pastor's son, ex-husband and father of the protagonists is in a clinic after a suicide attempt and is now practically unreachable. For each of the characters, he means a gap, a phantom pain of a different kind. But Holger is not the only absent per-son, who is much more present in the lives of the family members than they are ready to admit. More and more this extreme time brings the disappeared - living as well as dead - into light like under a burning glass, and with them the stories of anger and guilt appear.
John von Düffel ties in this dense novel the issues of our time to broader questions: on the relationship between man and nature, on belonging and isolation, on living and dying in times of a pandemic.
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John von Düffel
John von Düffel was born in Göttingen in 1966, he works as a dramaturg at Deutsches Theater Berlin and is professor for scenic writing at the Berlin...
John von Düffel was born in Göttingen in 1966, he works as a dramaturg at Deutsches Theater Berlin and is professor for scenic writing at the Berlin University of the Arts. He has published novels and story collections with DuMont since 1998, including 'Vom Wasser' (1998), 'Houwelandt' (2004), 'Wassererzählungen' (2014), 'Das Klassenbuch' (2017), 'Der brennende See' (2020) 'Wasser und andere Welten' (new edition 2021) and most recently ‘Die Wütenden und die Schuldigen’ (2021). His works have...