Wolfgang Herrndorf Sand - #3 Of A Series

Every now and then we will feature whole authors and much of their writings. As there is often a lot to write for us and for you to read we will do this in a series of posts covering a book each.

Wolfgang Herrndorf – An Author From My Hometown Berlin

Wolfgang Herrndorf Sand roman is one of the best fiction books I ever got to read. He is one of the authors who influenced me a lot during recent years. The sad thing is: He died from a brain tumor, which is part of his later writings. He used to be a writer for quite some time until he published his first successful book in 2012: Tschick.

I red it back then and nowadays pupils read it as well during school. I would have loved to read literature like that but we were reading the likes of Brecht and Goethe of course.

Actually I ended up reading all of his writings, which is why I am covering them for you in this first series of it’s kind.

Wolfgang Herrndorf Sand – an incredible labyrinth

Wolfgang Herrndorf writes from the perspective of an unknown character who lost his memory. Waking up on the top floor in a house in the middle of the Algerian desert he must overcome several obstacles to clinch to his life. Some hints are spread among to story to get behind who the memory-less character is, though you have to be rather patient. You get to know him and others in the introduction, but it’s not obvious later who is missing. Then as soon as the memory is lost, so is the reader, which creates a really immersive piece of literature. Who is a friend and who is an enemy? And who is the character anyway? I can’t tell you the end of the story, of course, but let’s say it ends with a hammer.

The title of the book seems to relate to the mass of information the character just can’t make sense of. Though, Herrndorf revealed in “Arbeit und Struktur” that he created the name rather by accident than on purpose.

However, Wolfgang Herrndorf Sand makes for a immersive read with great details of 1972 Algeria that you won’t be able to put aside.