Thomas Hettche

Like the case of those Egyptian papyruses that were once retrieved from the mud of the Nile and are now stored in an old cupboard in the philosophy department at the University of Gießen, it may be the case that following the transition to the digital age nothing will remain of our humanistic culture but a few remnants that one day people will pull out of the sand. That is the fear nurturing Thomas Hettche’s Totenberg (Death Mountain). (…) The novel appears at first sight to be a collection of portraits. Thomas Hettche set out to visit people who, for various reasons, were and remain important to him for his life, writing and thought. They include literary scholar Christa Bürger, film director Hans Jürgen Syberberg and photographer Angelika Platen. Hettche shows how these people think and feel, their attitudes, and their epoch or generation, always concerned to reveal the contradictions and discontinuities that make up a life. At the same time, however, Hettche brings his own biography into these portraits, combining dialogue with childhood recollections, experience and jettisoned images. In a third, intentionally reflective layer, he addresses considerations of authors such as Ernst Jünger, Jacques Derrida and Jan Philipp Reemtsma in an attempt to analyse and interpret our contemporary society.br>

Nico Bleutge: “Der schwarze Schnee”
© Süddeutsche Zeitung, 8 January 2013