“Moons Before Landing”
Clemens J. Setz tells of an eccentric
Clemens J. Setz presents a novel about an almost forgotten hollow world theorist. photo
© Helmut Fricke/dpa
There are many conspiracy stories, but stories about conspiracy tellers? Clemens J. Setz addresses the subject with a novel about an almost forgotten hollow world theorist.
The moon landing was a Hollywood production, the corona pandemic an invention of Bill Gates. Elvis lives on in secret and Paul McCartney has actually been dead for decades. Conspiracy theories like this have a ridiculous number of followers, especially on the internet. The fact that they have not only been appealing to people since the invention of Facebook can be read in the latest work by Büchner Prize winner Clemens J. Setz (40, “Love at the time of the Mahlstadt child”).
In the novel “Monde vor der Landing”, the Austrian author unearths the almost forgotten and true story of Peter Bender, a highly gifted but eccentric dreamer who lived 100 years ago in the Rhenish-Hessian Lutherstadt Worms. The literary version of Bender created by Setz considers the earth to be a hollow sphere, founds a religious community based on free love, and regularly comes into conflict with the authorities over “heretical” writings. When the Nazis came to power, he, his Jewish wife Charlotte and their two children faced increasing hostilities that eventually tragically escalated.
Between genius and madness
For his latest book, Setz, who has a weakness for bizarre characters and observations of everyday life, leaves the path of the disturbingly Kafkaesque and tries his hand at the unfamiliar field of the historical novel. On more than 500 pages, he gives readers a deep insight into the mental world of a person between genius and madness, who lives in a completely different reality than his fellow human beings. The multi-award-winning author also lives up to his reputation as an exceptional talent in German-language literature in his latest work, which is particularly evident in the exceptionally vivid language. However, here and there there are also minor weaknesses in the narrative flow and in the character drawings that are not always complete.
The story itself can easily be applied to the present day. For example, the main character’s striving to create the largest possible following in a society shaken by crises – or as one would say in modern German: to generate reach. The novel is therefore only at first glance a tragic family story on the eve of the Holocaust. Above all, it can be read as a parable of the disorientation of people who are driven in every age by the search for charismatic redeemer figures.
– Clemens J. Setz, Moons before landing, 528 pages, Suhrkamp Verlag, ISBN 978-3-518-43109-2.