The Homeland / Die Heimat
Novel
»A radical decomposition of identity, an erasure of one’s own origins.« Jörg Magenau, Süddeutsche Zeitung
»Everything was like it once was. Everything was there. Everything joined to form an image. Now I saw it, the centre of everything. Now I knew what I had to do.«
Germany in the early 1970s: a country full of fear of everything foreign. The only Italian at school seems like an alien being. In the 80s, it’s the Turkish people who are the first to put the tables outside the restaurants. As the people of Wetterau celebrate the first kebabs in the district as »resistance food«, Hitler, who had long since disappeared, begins to conquer the public space on radio and television once again. In the nineties, the narrator dreams his big dream...
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Germany in the early 1970s: a country full of fear of everything foreign. The only Italian at school seems like an alien being. In the 80s, it’s the Turkish people who are the first to put the tables outside the restaurants. As the people of Wetterau celebrate the first kebabs in the district as »resistance food«, Hitler, who had long since disappeared, begins to conquer the public space on radio and television once again. In the nineties, the narrator dreams his big dream of the Wetterauer Land, but first he and his cousin disappear under a duvet at the Eastern border of the new republic. The return home is managed within the family, his grandmother’s house is reconstructed as a museal space while the ground plan, if only that, of the synagogue that burnt down in 1938 is restored in the town. But even in the new millennium, when the entire country is constantly discussing the term »homeland«, no one wants to know about the past life in the concrete homeland, when those who ceased to exist with their deportation were still alive.
With an unerring sense for everything abysmal in lived normality, Andreas Maier tells of Germany between World War II, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the turn of the millennium; of how people make themselves comfortable in forty years of history. His view of a homeland that has always been fiction is incorruptible.
»Ortsumgehung [is] an elegiac magnum opus in the spirit of Marcel Proust.« Tobias Becker, Spiegel
»Andreas Maier has ... an enviable gift: He feels his homeland, he can define it geographically both internally as well as externally.« Jan C. Behmann, der Freitag
»At times, the book is drastic, at others sentimental, often funny and even a little didactic.« Martina Wagner-Egelhaaf, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
»If you want to know what kind of country we’re living in and how one can write literature about it, you should read this book.« Dirk Knipphals, taz. die tageszeitung
»What makes the success of Knausgård, Henschel, and Maier likewise, is the ordinariness of the events retold – childhood friendships, families’ misfits, disasters at school, the discovery of sexuality, adolescent politicization but also aestheticisation – but it also asserts that certain literary aspiration that fiction usually attests phantasy through the preciseness of description.« Andreas Platthaus, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on The University
»The title [of the series] Ortsumgehung [ring roads] was a masterstroke. It not only recalls the destruction of the natural landscape through the growth of civilization, but the fact that one always arrives at the goal in a roundabout fashion and often by skirting the familiar.« Florian Balke, Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung on The Family
»Andreas Maier is working on one of the largest and greatest projects of German-language literature.« Paul Jandl, Neue Zürcher Zeitung on The Family
»Andreas Maier has ... an enviable gift: He feels his homeland, he can define it geographically both internally as well as externally.« Jan C. Behmann, der Freitag
»At times, the book is drastic, at others sentimental, often funny and even a little didactic.« Martina Wagner-Egelhaaf, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
»If you want to know what kind of country we’re living in and how one can write literature about it, you should read this book.« Dirk Knipphals, taz. die tageszeitung
»What makes the success of Knausgård, Henschel, and Maier likewise, is the ordinariness of the events retold – childhood friendships, families’ misfits, disasters at school, the discovery of sexuality, adolescent politicization but also aestheticisation – but it also asserts that certain literary aspiration that fiction usually attests phantasy through the preciseness of description.« Andreas Platthaus, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on The University
»The title [of the series] Ortsumgehung [ring roads] was a masterstroke. It not only recalls the destruction of the natural landscape through the growth of civilization, but the fact that one always arrives at the goal in a roundabout fashion and often by skirting the familiar.« Florian Balke, Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung on The Family
»Andreas Maier is working on one of the largest and greatest projects of German-language literature.« Paul Jandl, Neue Zürcher Zeitung on The Family
»Ortsumgehung [is] an elegiac magnum opus in the spirit of Marcel Proust.« Tobias Becker, Spiegel
»Andreas Maier has ... an enviable gift: He feels his homeland, he can define it geographically both internally as well as externally.« Jan C. Behmann, der Freitag
»At times, the book is drastic, at others sentimental, often funny and even a little didactic.« Martina Wagner-Egelhaaf, Frankfurter Allgemeine...
»Andreas Maier has ... an enviable gift: He feels his homeland, he can define it geographically both internally as well as externally.« Jan C. Behmann, der Freitag
»At times, the book is drastic, at others sentimental, often funny and even a little didactic.« Martina Wagner-Egelhaaf, Frankfurter Allgemeine...
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2023, 245 pages
Persons
Andreas Maier
Author
Andreas Maier, born in Bad Nauheim, Hesse, in 1967, studied philosophy and German philology, and subsequently classical philology. He lives near Frankfurt am Main. Among numerous other honours, he was awarded the ZDF-»aspekte«-Literaturpreis, the Robert-Gernhardt-Preis, the Wilhelm-Raabe-Literaturpreis and the Franz-Hessel-Preis.
Andreas Maier
Author
Andreas Maier, born in Bad Nauheim, Hesse, in 1967, studied philosophy and German philology, and subsequently classical philology. He lives near...
© Jürgen Bauer
OTHER PUBLICATIONS
Latest first
Year of Publication: 2021
Andreas MaierYear of Publication: 2021
The Cities
In the newest instalment of his book series Ortsumgehung, Andreas Maier takes us on a journey. He paints the picture of the past decades by reference to the cities and landscapes that flanked the tourist trails of a society obsessed with mobility.
There is the car trip with his parents to the hated holiday apartment in Brixen when he is seven, or hitchhiking to the south...
Year of Publication: 2019
Andreas MaierYear of Publication: 2019
The Family
At the end of this novel, narrator Andreas is 28 years old, living in in Frankfurt am Main, studying, among other things, theories of truth. Andreas Maier tells the story of how stumbling blocks...
Rights sold to:
Greece (World Books)
Year of Publication: 2018
Andreas MaierYear of Publication: 2018
The University
Goethe University Frankfurt. 1988, 1989. An entirely different degree back then: in short, nothing less than complete freedom. From drinking beer in the pub »Doctor Flotte« to seminars on truth theory (which see the philosophy students rushing to the doctor’s already mid-semester) a complete loss of self is just around the corner for our protagonist, while time too is getting turned on its...
Year of Publication: 2017
Andreas Maier, Christine BüchnerYear of Publication: 2017
Bullau
A colourful, extremely personal combination of memory, research, and reflection turns into an approach towards the old-fashioned field of natural history. Based on walks in Wetterau and the Wendland, in South Tyrol and the Odenwald, Christiane Büchner and Andreas Maier map out their éducation naturelle. Their »treatise on the blessings of the spirit that the...
Year of Publication: 2016
Andreas MaierYear of Publication: 2016
The District
Andreas Maier’s The District is the latest volume of his insightful and illuminating book series Ortsumgehung. It deals with the exploration of life itself through the eyes of a prepubescent boy and his developing relationship with books, music and theatre and their interconnection with human existence. In the end he will comprehend the one true myth of art: Do...
Year of Publication: 2015
Andreas MaierYear of Publication: 2015
The Town
A dense, atmospheric novel about a boy’s first love, his first consciousness, his first attempt to define himself as a person. A moving memoir of the age between childhood and...
Rights sold to:
Denmark (Batzer)
Year of Publication: 2013
Andreas MaierYear of Publication: 2013
The Street
In the beginning it was nothing more than doctor games, but now there’s an adult-like urgency to them. Later, the teen magazine Bravo comes out and there is, for the first time, a language...
Rights sold to:
Denmark (Rosenkilde & Bahnhof)
Year of Publication: 2011
Andreas MaierYear of Publication: 2011
The House
With The House Andreas Maier continues what he started with his hit novel Das Zimmer (The Room). One book, one house, one life, close up and then seen at an almost...
Rights sold to:
Denmark (Rosenkilde & Bahnhof)
Year of Publication: 2010
Andreas MaierYear of Publication: 2010
The Room
Uncle J, the novel’s anti-hero, is not a character you readily identify with. Uncle J was a forceps delivery, which explains why he is not really all there. Still a child in many ways, he has...
Rights sold to:
Denmark (Rosenkilde & Bahnhof), Norway (Hovde & Brekke)
Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: English world rights digital (Frisch & Co.), Spanish world rights (Adriana Hidalgo), Czech Republic (Archa), Macedonia (Goten)
Year of Publication: 2009
Andreas MaierYear of Publication: 2009
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...
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...
Year of Publication: 2005
Andreas MaierYear of Publication: 2005
Kirillow
Studying together at Frankfurt University, Frank Kober and Julian Nagel are more than mere friends, and in fact something like kindred spirits. They do not appear bound by any particular faculty but...
Rights sold to:
Russia (AST), Poland (ATUT)
Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Spanish world rights (Adriana Hidalgo Editora), Netherlands (Ambo/Anthos)
Year of Publication: 2002
Andreas MaierYear of Publication: 2002
Klausen
One thing is clear: »Klausen is the scene of the crime.« But what really happens in this dream holiday village in South Tyrol is the subject of heated controversy. There is talk of an...
Rights sold to:
English world rights (Open Letter), Russia (AST), France (Actes Sud)
Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Spanish world rights (Tusquets), Italy (Aliberti)
Domestic Rights Sales: German Audiobook (Der Hörverlag)
Year of Publication: 2000
Andreas MaierYear of Publication: 2000
Adomeit’s Will
What is reality? This question is explored in fascinating style in this inventive, finely-drawn novel, which touches on language, the social construction of meaning, the relationship between...
Rights sold to:
Russia (AST), France (Métailié)
Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Spanish world rights (Adriana Hidalgo), Slovenia (Litera), Domestic Rights Sales: German Book Club (Der Club Bertelsmann)