Contents - Hoffmann und Campe Verlag

Dispatch: October 2009
224 pages
Siegfried Lenz
Landesbühne
The Regional Theatre
Company
Novel
The Provincial Theatre Company - Siegfried Lenz’s new novel
Perhaps hope is the ultimate wisdom of fools.
He never conceals his fundamentally positive attitude to life; he is never ashamed of his
sincerity and warm-hearted kindliness towards his fellowmen. (Marcel Reich-Ranicki)
After his extremely successful novella A Minute’s Silence and the play The Guinea Pig,
Siegfried Lenz has written a new novel. The story begins in a prison and gathers momentum
as a group of engaging delinquents make off with a visiting theatre company’s bus.
Hannes is a born artist. He attempted to improve his modest income at a motorway exit in
North Germany with the help of a purloined police sign – shortly afterwards he was found
out. Clemens, whom they all just call ‘The Professor’, had passed his prettiest doctorate
candidates summa cum laude – overlooking certain matters on the way. The two now share a
tolerably comfortable cell and the dreariness of a local prison. When a theatrical company
turns up their prospects of freedom suddenly change: the company’s bus leaves the prison
before the end of the play being performed on a set in the dining-hall. And when Hannes,
‘The Professor’ and the others arrive in their stolen bus in a town in summer festival mode, it
looks as though they were expected. The old lags turn into a strangely costumed troop of
actors and relationships in the orderly little town are in disarray...
After A Minute’s Silence Siegfried Lenz has given us a fast-moving picaresque novel.
A hectic adventure!
Open, sesame – I want to get out! With delicate humour Siegfried Lenz turns his
prisoners into actors.
Die Zeit: Which is your best book? Lenz: the one I’m working on at the moment,
because it is the most difficult, because it isn’t yet finished, because I am racking my
brains over it – and because it gives me hope.
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