Lutz Seiler

One of the rules of chess is that if a player touches a piece, he has to make his next move with that piece. Gavroche is one of the thirteen prose pieces in Lutz Seiler’s latest book, Die Zeitwaage, most of which are autobiographical. It converges on a failing “touch/move” in the king of games between two lovers. This middle story of the “Chess Trilogy” could easily be included in a collection of the most beautiful love stories since ancient times. (…) Gavroche is set in a country that has disappeared – the GDR in the mid-eighties, in the university city of Halle. Never before has the balefulness of East Germany been described with more precise affection! (…) Lutz Seiler’s heroes are dreamers, people who are disheartened, who have been abandoned, who have failed in a world that longingly believes in something like everyday security and the mercy of taking for granted that they are present in their lives. Where this is not granted, they sometimes still manage to find a comforting word. And someone who is on bar duty scrawls a sentence on the pub refrigerator recording the moment that marks the start of his earthing.

Angelika Overath: “Träumer, Verzagte”
© Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 12 October, 2009
With the kind permission of NZZ Online: www.nzz.ch