Buchcovef

Das Eigentliche (The Essential)

Novel
2010
Hardcover , 21 x 13 cm
176 pages
€ 19.00

Author

Iris Hanika’s The Essential tells the story of Hans Frambach, a German archivist obsessed with his country’s Nazi past for as long as he can remember. His life’s work has been to catalogue and process the »remembrances« of Holocaust survivors’ at the German Bureau of Past Management, a task so heartbreaking and all-consuming that Hans can no longer imagine life without misery—for him, it is »the essential« thing. Yet, Hans has begun to question the necessity of his unhappiness. When his best and only friend Graziela ends a tumultuous love affair, he begins to draw a line between his guilt over a deeply painful, inherited history and his own unhappiness. What is really essential to him, and what is the true value of the past?

Taking place in vibrant contemporary Berlin, The Essential explores the effects of the Nazi past on two middle-aged Germans, shining an ironic, humorous light on life in Germany right now and posing a critical question: in a country that carries few traces of its National Socialist past, how do we memorialize tragedy?

 

Rights sold to:

Albania (Botimet Toena)
Bulgaria (IG Elias Canetti)
Croatia (Sandorf)
Czech (Dauphin)
Dutch (De Arbeiderspers)
English (Voland & Quist)
Finnish (Siltala)
Georgia (Elf Publishing House)
German Paperback (btb Random House)
Italy (Atmosphere libri)
Macedonia (Goten Grup Dooel)
Moldavia (Cartier)
Polish (Jagiellonski)
Serbia (Zavet)
Slovenia (KUD Sodobnost)
Turkey (Tekin Yayinevi)
Ukraine (Dukh i Litera)

Presse

»This book withstands a second reading, as it shows, in literature’s abundant ways, the antagonism of remembrance, a novel – which was written, as must be said, after and in spite of Auschwitz.« (Andreas Platthaus, FAZ)

»An author who writes wittily, sincerely and without the slightest sensationalism.« (Spiegel)

»Iris Hanika is looking for ›the ultimate thing‹ und poses the question how to escape his own life through reappraising the NS past.« (SWR)

European Union Prize for Literature
Hotlist 2010
LiteratourNord-Prize 2011

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