Maxim Biller’s “Esra”, published 20 years ago, is a hard, clear, masterful novel. The effects of the ban shape German literature to this day.
from
Nils Minkmar
As if the book had foreseen its fate, the question of the boundary between life and literature runs through the novel “Esra”. The protagonist asks her boyfriend, the writer Adam, that he has to promise not to write anything about her. You always feel like you’re being watched. But he cannot, because an author who binds himself in this way loses his freedom, and without freedom he creates no art. He is aware of the enormous risk of taking this liberty, because he has written about Esra and her family in the past and thus earned the hatred of the dominating mother.