Ernst-Wilhelm Händler

The first-person narrator is an engineer. He works for the global group D’Wolf as their Leipzig plant manager. He is trying to develop intelligent robots in his laboratory, so-called s-bots, which, through coordination and cooperation, are to be able to carry out demanding collective tasks. However, some members of the executive board object to the laboratory’s existence, so it is a secret laboratory within the world of the company that has to be financed from an off-the-books account. This situation intensifies the narrator’s paranoia. He would like to be in control of everything and suspects everyone of torpedoing his vision of creating a robot. In the end, the narrator survives through getting rid of anyone who stood in the way of his project – his wife Maren, his daughter Greta and his closest colleague Peter. (...)
Der Überlebende (The Survivor) is a theological novel that sets out on a quest for origins, for the soul and for evil. The advent of perfect machines requires someone to play the part of evil. The narrator takes this burden upon himself as a second Lucifer.

Ijoma Mangold: “Böse Materie”
© Die ZEIT, 7 March 2013