BROTHER OF ALL IMAGES

Requiem for someone who knows stuff – a dark comedy in shining prose.

Sports reporter Addi Schmuck has his own agenda when he arranges for his young colleague, Moni Gottlieb, to be relieved of all her editorial duties in order to assist him. As a matter of course, he expects her to leave her smartphone at home and join him in his vintage car to drive to the stadium of the top-of-the-league football club, located all the way at the south end of the city. The club’s greenkeeper is battling with a mysterious natural phenomenon and hopes Schmuck can help him. But it turns out that Schmuck himself needs help in this matter. He introduces Moni to a close friend who lives in an overgrown refuge and who everyone refers to as “The Knower”. And so, a game between the three begins.

There are few contemporary writers who employ the tools of narrative literature as subtly as Georg Klein, who play this game with such joy and in such an idiosyncratic manner. His latest novel takes the reader into the editorial offices of a well-established southern German regional newspaper as well as to a space where this world and the beyond merge, the realm between mediumship and animated nature.