Eins zu eins
One to One
Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Köln 2003, 427 pages
When the archivist of a map publisher suddenly disappears in Jens Sparschuh’s new novel Eins zu eins, it soon become clear that he, like so many obsessed researchers before him, is searching for a will-o’-the-wisp as sunken as Vineta or Atlantis. Or as that GRD which Sparschuh had similarly submerge very impressively in the eponymous living room fountain of his successful novel Der Zimmerspringbrunnen. No wonder that the archivist’s colleague, who Sparschuh sends after him as the first-person narrator, takes the reader into a strangely disconnected landscape, where everywhere the East German present is reflected in Wendish history, like trees in a Brandenburg lake.
Jens Sparschuh – Biography
Peter Richter: „Wende verzweifelt gesucht"
© Frankfurter Rundschau, 18.03.2003
Der Zimmerspringbrunnen
The Living Room Fountain
Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Koeln 1995, 160 Seiten
The rise of Hinrich Lobek from a processed-out staffer of the East German municipal housing authority to a sales representative for living room fountains culminates in his promotion to marketing director of the Eastern territory. [...] Jens Sparschuh tells of people who are incapable of taking a realistic view of their past. The living room fountain focuses in a symbol the retrospective mythologizing of GRD socialism, and decidedly withdraws it from the protected status of a listed kitsch shrine. The author’s humour brings together two truths: understanding for the small Atlanticist and criticism of a time that withheld what gives people’s lives meaning.
Jens Sparschuh – Biography
Sibylle Cramer: „Ein literarisches Souvenir aus dem versunkenen Atlantis"
© Frankfurter Rundschau, 18.11.1995
