Arabic world rights (Kalima), France (Métailié)
Anyone looking for emergency solutions for real problems is doing patchwork. But is there anything else to do for someone who has had his living taken from him, who can either not work at all or on short-time? What do the well-intentioned proposals of a politician really mean when they give 'active and hard-working' people twice the regular voting power?
Volker Braun, who deciphers the great suffering replete in the daily decisions made between Erfurt, Kaiserslautern and Venezuela, relays 64 episodes from our catastrophic present in Flickwerk, causing us to wonder if our situation should leave us laughing or crying.
His brief reports in Flickwerk unite the tradition of Bertolt Brecht's Geschichten von Herrn Keuner with Thomas Bernhard's miniatures in Stimmenimitator, locating the present in the recognizable. Flickwerk testifies to rogue author Volker Braun's great art of finding and fashioning our reality in such a way that we cannot decide whether we are fools or following fools.
Born in Dresden in 1939, when he was younger, Braun worked as a printer and in an open pit mine. Subsequently, he studied philosophy in Leipzig and worked at the Berliner Ensemble until 1990. Volker Braun lives in Berlin.
Born in Dresden in 1939, when he was younger, Braun worked as a printer and in an open pit mine. Subsequently, he studied philosophy in Leipzig...
»What did you do in 2020?« The year when the world is »moved, all of a sudden, to stand still«. When the streets are »humanless«, the city is quietened and...
UK & ANZ (Smokestack Books)
Relocating the Secret Point gathers underground texts and speeches. The collection opens with a satire of expatriation written in January 1977 and is followed by the radical pamphlet Büchner’s Letters; it contains essays on Shakespeare and Rimbaud, Goethe and Kafka: poetry and politics, and points to a shift in the work that will grow into a radical change.
Considering contemporary conditions, what possibilities does a writer have of effecting change? On intimate terms with all literary traditions, Volker Braun makes use of tried and tested prose forms to come closer to an answer: aphorisms, pieces of dialogue, quotes. In his workshop dreams, puzzling fragments, and stubborn truths all come to light.
This series of coup-like attacks...
Giorgio Badini, son of a Tuscan mason, now professor emeritus and owner of a country estate, is enjoying retirement with his wife. But the two pensioners suddenly find their house occupied by a...
Greece (Enastron)
Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: France (Inventaire)