Cracks in the Wall

"We will start afresh. We will not give up." This is the motto of Lars Gustafsson's cycle of novels that paints a panoramic picture of life in the late 1960s: "Herr Gustafsson persönlich, autobiography disguised as novel, a book that hums like an orchestra gearing up. Next, the melancholic Wollsachen, the story of a country school teacher who tries to save a brilliant maths student but loses him to drugs. The prophetic eco-thriller Das Familientreffen in which a high-ranking official loses his job after tracing a bacteriological contamination to its source. Finally, Sigismund, again with Gustafsson as one of the protagonists, and Der Tod eines Bienenzüchters about a teacher's sickness and death from cancer." (Andreas Isenschmid)

In all five novels, the narrator, although appearing under different names, is a man born, like Gustafsson, in 1936. This year, therefore, all of them will turn 70 – a good reason to present these still pertinent "works of hope" in a single volume.

"An astonishing juggler and magician." (Jochen Schimmang, Die Welt)