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Juli Zehs and Simon Urban's novel "Between Worlds": how exhausting

2023-01-25T16:21:41.456Z


Juli Zeh and Simon Urban torment their readers with the letter novel "Between Worlds". Our book review.


Juli Zeh and Simon Urban torment their readers with the letter novel “Between Worlds”.

Our book review.

This book gets on your nerves in such a way that you get in a bad mood while reading it.

Now, of course, you have to ask yourself why that is.

Why you want to bang Juli Zeh's and Simon Urban's "Between Worlds" after a few pages in the corner.

Firstly, where it would just lie around and continue to get on your nerves;

and then, secondly, you never find out whether you can at some point be happy about something like a gain in knowledge while reading it.

Or, crazy idea - feeling?

Or, my God, at least linguistic finesse.

Nothing, nothing, nothing.

That is why the author of these lines refuses to call this "novel" a novel.

After all, the word implies that we are dealing with literature here.

In the best case, with art.

But “Between Worlds” is nothing more than a zeitgeist cast in fiction.

Written so uninspired

that you can just as well watch any political talk show in the first, second or in God's name on BILD TV for twelve hours at a time.

Frustration level in view of the lack of consensus among all those involved: just as high.

Juli Zeh and Simon Urban try to depict the zeitgeist

So Zeh/Urban annoy us with the following constellation: On the one hand, cultural journalist Stefan in Hamburg, who wants to be a good white cis man and therefore diligently changed in private emails.

In digital letters to his old friend Theresa, for example, he describes an editorial meeting in a politically correct way: “Members (m/f/d) of the online editorial team from Berlin were also involved.” Stefan wants to change the world with journalism that shows attitude.

In view of climate change and the Ukraine war, one can no longer afford not to have an attitude towards everything.

Farmer Theresa, on the other hand, has neither the time nor nerve for attitude.

Her farm is in Schütte, not far from Bracken.

Readers of the latest Zeh novel "Über Menschen", which the Munich Volkstheater has successfully adapted,

remember this dreary region, 80 kilometers west of Berlin.

“451 residents, 28 percent AfD.

Sparsely populated, socially weak, largely forgotten by the world.

Pretty much the opposite of Hamburg and the Outer Alster,” says Theresa, describing her home.

The letter-novel "Z Zwischen Welten" is laboriously redundant

And off the tedious, redundant discussion between the two begins.

In which she accuses him of forgetting in his intellectual bubble what is really going on in the country.

And he is exhaustingly appalled that she dismisses Twitter debates as a storm in a teacup.

If they hadn't been close friends before, they write once, they wouldn't exchange two sentences with each other today.

And that should be the highlight?

That they continue to do it here, despite totally different worldviews?

With this angry exchange of letters, do Zeh and Urban want to encourage us to keep talking, despite the rifts of opinion that have opened up in our society?

Because you can only fill them up if you stop seeing everything in black and white?

Then this request failed miserably.

Because although many of the arguments that Stefan and Theresa chew through are correct,

as a reader you don't start to reflect on yourself.

Instead of being touched by the injustices of this world, one sees oneself bullied with a raised index finger.

And in the end feels: nothing.

Because the text is bloodless.

In addition, Stefan and Theresa are unsympathetic.

Like all protagonists.

How do Zeh and Urban see our society?

Green or CSU.

cargo bike or SUV.

An in-between excluded.

At the end you close the book and think: It's not quite like that.

How fortunate.

How do Zeh and Urban see our society?

Green or CSU.

cargo bike or SUV.

An in-between excluded.

At the end you close the book and think: It's not quite like that.

How fortunate.

How do Zeh and Urban see our society?

Green or CSU.

cargo bike or SUV.

An in-between excluded.

At the end you close the book and think: It's not quite like that.

How fortunate.

Juli Zeh / Simon Urban: "Between Worlds".

Luchterhand, Munich, 448 pages;

24 euros.

Source: merkur

All life articles on 2023-01-25

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