Perhaps hope is the ultimate wisdom of fools. After his extremely successful novella A Minute’s Silence and the play The Guinea Pig, Siegfried Lenz has written a new novel. The story begins in a prison and gathers momentum as a group of engaging delinquents make off with a visiting theatre company’s bus. Hannes is a born artist. He attempted to improve his modest income at a motorway exit in North Germany with the help of a purloined police sign – shortly afterwards he was found out. Clemens, whom they all just call ‘The Professor’, had passed his prettiest doctorate candidates summa cum laude – overlooking certain matters on the way. The two now share a tolerably comfortable cell and the dreariness of a local prison. When a theatrical company turns up their prospects of freedom suddenly change: the company’s bus leaves the prison before the end of the play being performed on a set in the dining-hall. And when Hannes, ‘The Professor’ and the others arrive in their stolen bus in a town in summer festival mode, it looks as though they were expected. The old lags turn into a strangely costumed troop of actors and relationships in the orderly little town are in disarray... After A Minute’s Silence Siegfried Lenz has given us a fast-moving picaresque novel. Rights sold to: Spain (Maeva), Denmark (Hovedland), Taiwan (Yuan-Liou) and Korea (Sakyejul) A hectic adventure! Open, sesame – I want to get out! With delicate humour Siegfried Lenz turns his prisoners into actors. Die Zeit: Which is your best book? Lenz: the one I’m working on at the moment, because it is the most difficult, because it isn’t yet finished, because I am racking my brains over it – and because it gives me hope. He never conceals his fundamentally positive attitude to life; he is never ashamed of his sincerity and warm-hearted kindliness towards his fellowmen. (Marcel Reich-Ranicki)
About the author:
Siegfried Lenz, born in Lyck in East Prussia in 1926, is one of the most important and widely-read writers in post-war and present-day literature. His works have been published since 1951 (Es waren Habichte in der Luft - There were Hawks in the Air) by Hoffmann und Campe and has won numerous prizes, including the Goethe Prize from the city of Frankfurt-am-Main, the German Booksellers’ Peace Prize and the Lew-Kopelew Prize for Peace and Human Rghts 2009. His most recent novel Schweigeminute (A Minute’s Silence, 2008) is a longtime bestseller. It has sold 370.000 copies and rights have been sold to a large number of foreign publishers.
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