Sanssouci

Like a folk festival, Andreas Maier paints a droll and bold, ironically affectionate picture of contemporary German society, this time in the center of provincial East Germany.

On a hot summer day, mourners assemble at Frankfurt's main cemetery to attend the funeral of Max Hornung, a director who suffered a fatal accident. After moving away from Frankfurt, he had lived in Potsdam, which is also the home of some of the mourners: Merle Johansson, a radiant beauty, and her young son Jesus, the headstrong twins Heike and Arnold, and few TV people. The Russian-German Alexei, a novice from a Russian Orthodox monastery, travelled from Munich. What did all these people have to do with Hornung?

Sanssouci, the world cultural heritage site, isn't the only thing in Potsdam. The city also has many squares and pubs, as well as a many layers, quite literally; beneath the Sanssouci park, there is a system of interconnecting tunnels and many chambers. Some allegedly used for occult séances and sado-masochistic gatherings. The youths that roams them play tricks on the adults, with dangerous consequences. Had Westler Hornung known about it? In his television series »Oststadt«, his portrayal of the people of Potsdam had sparked a controversy so bitter that it was bordering on absurd.

»The author knows Potsdam well, and yet despite this – or perhaps because of it – the city seems quite peculiar to the reader by the end of the novel. [...] From the »giant tangle« of voices, the art of storytelling weaves a picture of a society in the midst of a period of palpable spiritual confusion. [...] In Sanssouci, Andreas Maier gives the preferred topos of German and Austrian literature a special twist: provincial demons. In Sanssouci, provincial demons become indistinguishable from their triviality. « Ernst Osterkamp, FAZ

»One has to give this novel immense credit for pushing blather about things towards the brink of the precipice holding the unknown. « Iris Radisch, Die Zeit

»An enigmatic novel that captivates. « Tobias Becker, Der Spiegel

»It's wicked and mystifying, and for precisely those reasons, it's also an enthralling and sometimes caustically comical book. [...] The realism in Andreas Maier's study of Potsdam's milieu in Sanssouci satirizes local politics while mixing with the dangerously alluring flirtations of a radical who knows exactly what can and cannot be said. Bravo.« Ina Hartwig, FR