Helden wie wir
Heroes Like Us
Volk und Welt, Berlin 1995, 322 pages
Klaus Ultzscht enters the world on August 20, 1968, a month too early, a precipitate delivery on a hotel table. Outside, tanks are rolling past; the air trembles and stinks from burned petrol. Nor do things become better later. His parents see to that: father, an agent for the State Security Service; mother a health inspector. The Uhltzschts live in Berlin, within view of the Ministry for State Security. [...] With grimly cheerful irreverence, Brussig riotously narrates his protagonist’s story, adopts the pose of a provocateur, an anti-bourgeois. With blithe hyperbole, he avails himself of a drastic, coarse and smutty style. The book owes its energetic character to its excessiveness, exaggeration, impudence and angry verve, restrained only by the author’s cutting wit.
Thomas Brussig – Biography
Marion Löhndorf: „Wer hat die Mauer umgeschmissen"
© Neue Züricher Zeitung, 10.10.1995
