The Slumber in the Clocks

August 2015: Fabian Hoffmann, the former dissident, is a chronicler employed by the »One Thousand and One Nights Department« at Treva. Here, in the labyrinths of an underground world, the »Security« pursues activities that once included the reunification of two divided nations. Fabian entered this world following one of its captains, code name »Nemo«, in order to find out who betrayed his sister and his parents. At the same time, Florian is writing a chronicle that is intended to be published on the 25th anniversary of the reunification. But things take a different turn and Fabian begins a journey that takes him deep into Treva’s society and its utopias.

He analyses notions of order and the principles by which power is exercised, the interrelations of politics, state apparatus and the media, observes the changes in everyday life. In the process, his chronicle becomes more and more detached from its original official assignment, meanders back into the Dresden of his childhood, into the time that stood still two epochal years ago. On his search for order and meaning, Fabian tilts at the windmills of power, fights the fabrications of reality, the loss of all certainties – and still never gives up the dream of a liberated future.

»... The Slumber in the Clocks is anything but a normal publication, it is a bombshell ... a fantastic alternative version of a [conventional retelling], endowed with all the licences of poetry.« Richard Kämmerlings, WELT AM SONNTAG

»The fact that Tellkamp is a fantastic stylist, a writer who can make an entire world shine in just a few sentences, becomes evident on the 900 pages ...« Adam Soboczynski, DIE ZEIT

»[Tellkamp] thinks in layers, in telluric forces – also when it comes to literature.« Andreas Platthaus, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

»[The Slumber in the Clocks] is designed on a large scale and profound and often put into language brilliantly. [….] A novel that should be re-examined in great detail after the first wave of – predominantly – brute criticism.« Michael Hametner, der Freitag

»[The Slumber in the Clocks] shines with passages that delight the reader.« Cornelia Geißler, Berliner Zeitung