THE REPUBLIC OF THE MAD

  • 20,000 copies sold!
  • A true and incredible story from the last century: funny and surprisingly relevant.
  • 140,000 copies sold of the author's previous novels altogether!

Fiume on the Adriatic. Until 1918, the port city belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but now Italian freikorps are moving in, led by a famous man. Gabriele D’Annunzio, poet, war hero, and fervent nationalist, declares a new republic. In Fiume, the wildest state in world history is about to be born, with politics as spectacle. Among D'Annunzio's followers is a certain Mussolini. And Guido Baron Keller of Kellerer and Wolkenkeller. The daring aviator, nudist, and utopian is obsessed with an idea from futurist art circles: to destroy the decaying world of yesterday and build a radiant new one, madness is required. So, they set to work. Patients from asylums across Italy are summoned (preferably harmless ones) to become ministers in the new state.

And so, the orderly Cherubino embarks on a journey to the Adriatic, accompanying a friendly ax murderer – toward the dawn of a new era, into the Republic of the Insane.

"The cheerful melancholic Stermann is a great master of the absurd." 
Süddeutsche Zeitung

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  • Publisher: Rowohlt Hundert Augen
  • Release: 16.09.2025
  • ISBN: 978-3-498-00745-4
  • 304 Pages
  • Author: Dirk Stermann

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Buchcover von THE REPUBLIC OF THE MAD
Dirk Stermann THE REPUBLIC OF THE MAD
Portrait von Dirk Stermann
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Dirk Stermann

Dirk Stermann is well-known in Germany as an actor and as a TV show host. In his adopted country of Austria he is famous as the long-standing host of the country’s best-known talk show. His novel Der Junge bekommt das Gute zuletzt was published in 2016, followed by  Der Hammer in 2019 and Maksym in 2022.