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The Courtyard
On existential states of mind, in uniquely condensed form.
One of the last great masters of the novella writes about the magical power of gathering shadows.
With an autobiographical text on deeply formative childhood experiences.
»Love is not an opportunity for freedom; it happens out of necessity,« thinks a woman who realizes her husband has left her.
Darkly luminous yet crystal clear sentences like this one have made Hartmut Lange’s prose famous.
Four novellas, complemented by an autobiographical piece, with which Hartmut Lange tells us about the formative experiences for his life and his writing: Christmas 1944 in Naßwerder, the horrors of forced evacuation, the death of his father and later his brother.
»It was an inkling of how our lives would lack presuppositions, once we could no longer cite the protective hand above us.«
Hartmut Lange
96 pages
2020
978-3-257-07095-8
»From the seeming innocence of the narrative style, this calm, almost scrupulously unspectacular tone, something unfathomable suddenly emerges.«
»Lange’s calm, precise language is easily recognised.«
»Hartmut Lange continues to write his timeless novellas.«
»The inoffensiveness of the narrative, that serene, almost scrupulously unsensational tone, suddenly gives way to something unfathomable«
»The reader is gripped by each and every word, and really feels the author’s immense capacity for love.«
»His novellas are a literary meditation on evil and mystery.«