In these terrible pandemic and war days, it is also the time when publishers send out their first previews for the fall. Lo and behold, what kind of book is Suhrkamp announcing almost inconspicuously in the German-language literature between new titles by Friedrich Ani, Durs Grünbein or Robert Walser?
The new novel by Uwe Tellkamp. It should be called “The Sleep in the Clocks”, the working title behind it is “Lava”, the title is around 900 pages, and the publication is not planned for sometime in autumn, but for mid-May.
But the word “already” is a euphemism in this case. Because this novel, which Tellkamp wrote as a sequel to his 2008 successful and GDR pre-reunification novel “Der Turm”, was supposed to be published in 2020.
Then its appearance was postponed to spring 2021, after all there was no more talk of it. The reason: suspected discrepancies between publisher and author; an author who is close to the AfD and other right-wing circles and said during a discussion in 2018 with his colleague Durs Grünbein that “95 percent” of all refugees only came to Germany to “immigrate to the social systems here”.
It’s about the interdependencies between politics and the media
During a reading in the small Saxon town of Pulsnitz, Uwe Tellkamp confessed that his “Turm” sequel would reach into the present, in the year when almost a million refugees came to Germany, mainly because of the Syrian civil war: “Then there were the how crisis of 2015, which can always be described, and I have been working on a passage in the book about this time for a long time.”
And he went on to say about his novel: “Here people fight about ideologies, about what a society should be. I was always concerned with the social, and thus with the political, not as agitation, but as material.”
It is easy to imagine that there was potential for conflict between Suhrkamp and Tellkamp. An agreement seems to have been reached and the novel has been edited to the satisfaction of both parties. So now this “society novel” can be read and examined, and the author’s attitude and character’s speech can be clearly distinguished.
Signed first editions are available at Buchhaus Loschwitz
As it says in the preview about the hero, who is working on a chronicle for the 25th anniversary of reunification: “He analyzes concepts of order and principles of exercising power, the interdependence of politics, the state apparatus and the media, observes the changes in everyday life.”
The question is whether time hasn’t passed over Uwe Tellkamp, ”The Sleep in the Clocks” was too long; whether it really still needs his perspective, not just because of the pandemic and the war in Ukraine. Authors such as Manja Präkels, Daniel Schulz, Hendrik Bolz and Lukas Rietzschel have written the social novel from an East German perspective.
In any case, Tellkamp’s Dresden environment is already enthusiastic. “Endlich!!!” (with three exclamation marks) is how Susanne Dagens Buchhaus Loschwitz announces the novel’s announcement on social media – and at the same time offers the signed first edition.