[ book tip by Deutscher Buchpreis 2008 ] Uwe Tellkamp’s big pre-unification novel “Der Turm” (“The Tower”) uses a multitude of scenarios, images and forms of speech to depict a panoramic view of a society that spirals downwards towards its end. That the story has an epic dimension becomes clear in the subtitle: “Story from a sunken land”. Tellkamp uses the example of a bourgeois Dresden family to tell a story of adaptation and resistance in an effete system. As never before, readers are confronted with the aroma, the register and the mentality of the late GDR. The novel boasts a great variety of characters and is set in different milieus: among pupils, medical doctors, writers and members of the political cadre.
Tellkamp sends his rebellious protagonist Christian Hoffmann on a journey to hell, which leads from the enclave of his protected bourgeois upbringing to his military service and to his time as a prison inmate of the NVA (the National People’s Army).
With this novel, Tellkamp manages to renew the tradition of the generation novel masterfully, while integrating more contemporary ways of writing, such as playfully associative observations. Thus he shows with his sumptuous novel a rare ability of stylistic mutability within the boundaries of an extensive epic work.
Uwe Tellkamp received the “Deutsche Buchpreis 2008“ award for “Der Turm” (“The Tower”).

[ book info ] Tellkamp, Uwe: Der Turm. (The Tower). (original language: Deutsch) Suhrkamp, Frankfurt / M., 2008 .