New Novel by Leif Randt  Playful Seriousness

Leif Randt’s new novel “Let’s Talk About Feelings” once again explores the emotional lives of millennials. Set in a saturated present without major conflicts, it still leaves room for minor crises and love. But how do these moments actually feel in such a world?

At one moment, Marian Flanders is about to lose control: shortly after his mother’s alternative sea burial, he decides to look at his phone less. Instead, he wants to pay more attention to the people around him. When he stares a bit too long at a man on the subway, the man snaps at him. Marian apologizes, saying he “didn’t mean to stare, he had just forgotten his phone at home. 'Get a life!' the man says, then sits back down.”

A Coming-of-Middle-Age Story

Marian Flanders is in his early forties and fears that, after his mother’s death, a dull middle phase of life awaits him. But that feeling doesn’t last long. The antihero in Leif Randt’s new novel Let’s Talk About Feelings quickly recovers. First, he feels normal, then genuinely good. Eventually, he falls in love in his own way, and a measured coming-of-middle-age story begins.
Leif Randt’s new novel was highly anticipated, especially after the success of his previous book, Allegro Pastell. There, Randt tells the story of a long-distance relationship between the web designer Jerome Daimler and the successful young author Tanja Arnheim. Like no other literary work, Allegro Pastell captures the constant self-reflection of late-2000s millennials.

Literary critic Ijoma Mangold went so far in an epic review as to suggest that no millennial could write a novel in the future “without positioning themselves in relation to Allegro Pastell.” He even did not rule out the possibility that a youth movement could emerge from the book. What was a display of careless enthusiasm did not change the fact that Leif Randt established himself as the most contemporary author of his generation.

2025, but different

Since Randt struggles with crises and wars, he sets Let’s Talk About Feelings in 2025 under slightly altered political conditions: the government is formed by the progressive party Progress ’16 under Chancellor Fatima Brinkmann, and Robert Habeck returns as Vice Chancellor. The right-wing national libertarians remain below ten percent. In the United States, Bernie Sanders is in his second term. For now, the world is in order.

In this moderately stable world, Marian Flanders runs the West Berlin fashion boutique Kenting Beach. There, he sells a curated selection of high-end brands and vintage pieces, but business is not going particularly well. Not even when he decides to source fake designer items from a Chinese supplier and sell them in an installation-style display.

Mini-Sabbatical Against the Mini-Crisis

To escape his gentle melancholy, Marian decides to take a mini-sabbatical in Tenerife. He spends some time in his father Milo Coen’s holiday apartment. The former news anchor and occasional TikTok star in retirement tells Marian how that break in the Canaries had once inspired him: For Marian Flanders, probably the best time is beginning as well. Yet there is no question of exuberance or overwhelming emotion. As in Randt’s previous novels, the new antihero makes his decisions with careful consideration. Once again, a sense of balance dominates.

A Love Story Between the Berlinale and the Olympic Stadium

The most intense moments occur in the love story between Marian Flanders and director Kuba Kötting. After meeting in Marian’s boutique, she invites him to the Berlinale premiere of her film, which reflects a central theme of the novel: fashion. In Kuba’s film, the two thirty-somethings Milan and Sam travel across Europe in a camper van, spending the cash inheritance of Milan’s deceased father in various outlet centers. Marian experiences the scenes of trying on “real clothes in real outlet towns” as so vividly real that he occasionally feels bored. In the frustration and euphoria of shopping, reality presents itself to Marian as it is: “just as brutally exhausting and strangely satisfying as any other decision-making process.”

Their first date takes place during a sleet shower with canned beer at a football match between Hertha BSC and 1. FC Kaiserslautern in Berlin’s Olympic Stadium. When aggressive jubilation breaks out in the away section after the last-minute equalizer, Marian wonders, “had he ever seen adults so freely, who weren’t on ecstasy, as Kuba and the other Kaiserslautern fans in that moment? It was a blast. The game ended one to one.”

The love story takes them from the Goethe-Institut in New Delhi to the park complex “Gärten der Welt” in East Berlin’s Marzahn district, where the novel reaches a genuinely orgiastic conclusion, yet once again without ecstasy.

Caught in the Crossfire of the Apolitical

In Let’s Talk About Feelings, Randt has refined his clear and precise narrative style to the point that his latest work has received a notably divided response. Alongside consistent praise, some fatigue has been expressed regarding the overtly aestheticized world and the calculated emotional restraint. The apolitical nature of the book has also been criticized. Remarkably, Randt anticipates this discussion in the novel itself, giving Marian a comparatively passionate defense of the apolitical. The resulting tension is complete—and, as always with Randt, playfully serious.

Whether this playful seriousness has lost its formerly escapist potential in crisis-ridden times or whether it heightens the novel’s irritations cannot be definitively answered. One thing is certain: Let’s Talk About Feelings is, as Leif Randt told the Saarländischer Rundfunk in an interview, definitely his “most cheerful and world-embracing book.”

October 2025