Carolin Gasteiger
Tasmania
If there is only one place to escape from the climate catastrophe in order to survive: then to Tasmania. An island located to the south, democratically governed, with sufficient fresh water. Paolo Giordano’s novel of the same name is very much about the climate, but also about a small, private crisis. The protagonist Paolo, whose name is not coincidentally the same as the author, is in his early 40s, a journalist and novelist, and when it becomes clear that he and his wife will not have children, he falls into a hole. His way out: He deals with climatic phenomena such as clouds, travels to climate conferences and to Japan, and thinks about depression, equality and terrorism. All crises and challenges of the current world occur. The book by Giordano, himself a physicist and the youngest writer in Italy to be awarded the Premio Strega in 2008, is not a typical novel, but a book that is stirring.
Paolo Giordano: Tasmania. Translated from Italian by Barbara Kleiner. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt 2023, 335 pages, 25 euros.