Wilhelm Genazino

The consistency with which Wilhelm Genazino’s characters become more and more lonely is quite impressive. They resist the unacceptable aspects of everyday life and embarrassment thresholds, but as social developments continue unrelentingly, Genazino’s characters have a growing sense of shame. Although politics plays no role in his novels, it is a painfully accurate mirror of the changes. Genazino tells us the most outrageous things about pedestrian zones, detached houses and working conditions. (…) The book’s hero is a self–employed architect, and this freelance work is a most eloquent expression of the independent mode of existence around which Genazino’s writing always revolves. This architect spends hours assuring himself, aimlessly walking or gazing out of the window before sketching a new petrol station or bridge project with development potential almost like a sleepwalker. (…) The hero is at the mercy of circumstances, the situations become increasingly grotesque and various forms of small–time fraud are the thread running through them. As so often in Genazino’s texts, however, the focus is less on the plot and its intricacies than on his biting sentences and harsh observations.

Helmut Böttiger: „Die Sehnsucht nach Rollmöpsen“
© Süddeutsche Zeitung, 26 July 2011