Meet the Author with Markus Thielemann

How do people react to changes in their homeland? In Markus Thielemann's Von Norden rollt ein Donner, the return of the wolf to the Lüneburg Heath triggers conflicts and tensions in the village. The novel vividly depicts the clash between tradition and modernity, patriotism and xenophobia.

On 13 May 2025, the author will be a guest at Meet the Author. The discussion will be led by Charlotte Desel, DAAD teaching assistant at the University of Copenhagen, and Mareike Wittler from Goethe-Institut Denmark.

The event will be held online and in German. As always, participation is free, and everyone is welcome.
 

Von Norden rollt ein Donner

Every day, 19-year-old Jannes and his family drive their sheep across the Lüneburg Heath. But there is growing unrest in the area; the wolf is back. Sheep attacks are on the rise, and with them conflicts in the village, which quickly become political. While ethnic settlers try to exploit the issue for their own purposes, the situation intensifies and threatens to escalate into vigilantism by the locals, Jannes flees to the heath to live with his sheep. But there, a ghostly encounter suddenly unravels the local dark history, casting its long shadow into the present. With his anti-homeland novel, Markus Thielemann creates a psychogram of a landscape of longing and demonstrates, in a way that is as subtle as it is captivating, how an idyll can turn into its exact opposite.