Hartmut Lange

Hartmut Lange was born in Berlin-Spandau in 1937. He studied theatrical production at the Babelsberg Film Institute. In 1960, he received an appointment as theatrical producer at the Deutsches Theater in East Berlin. He made a trip to former Yugoslavia just before the first performance of his play, Marski, and decided not to return to the former East Germany. Settling in West Berlin, he worked at the Halleschen Ufer Theatre and, in the 70s, as theatrical producer and director at the Schiller and Schlosspark Theatres. Hartmut Lange writes plays, essays and prose. In 2003 he received the ›Italo Svevo Prize‹. Hartmut Lange's books have been published in 9 languages.

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»For more than a quarter century, small, beguiling narrative miracles have been happening at the heart of German literature. Hartmut Lange is a case in point: His novellas are among the very best that can be found on the shelves of bookstores.«Bolero

»Hartmut Lange’s characters are not plagued by psychological defects. Instead, he diagnoses a lack of metaphysics as the cause of their perturbation. It is for this reason that his books – at a time when questions of being have become so pressing largely because they were repressed for so long – are so outrageously topical.«Der Spiegel

»When perfection can no longer be expected from history, it seeks refuge in art. This is why Hartmut Lange aspires to write perfect sentences and texts: every passage is direct and precise, indelibly engraved in its context, with a mastery of omission, concentration on essentials and extreme intensity.«Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

»Hartmut Lange is not only one of the last grand masters of the novella, but also a virtuoso of a style refined to the last detail.«Mannheimer Morgen