Michael Kleeberg recounts stories and fates in a globalized world, transforming the major questions of our time into gripping literature
In a kaleidoscopic novel composed of 12 books and inspired by Goethe’s West-Eastern Divan and Nizami’s Layla and Majnun, Michael Kleeberg tells the stories of a group of friends from very different cultural backgrounds: Hermann, a German philosophy teacher; Maryam, an Iranian singer; Younes, a Lebanese pastor; Zygmunt, a Polish handyman; Bernhard, a director of an association for youth social work; Ulla, his wife; and Kadmos, an Arab poet. Kleeberg’s book is set in the West and in the East as well as in the realm of myths; he combines different points-of-view and genres into a big, multi-perspectival whole that does justice to the questions and insecurities of the present.
"A 21st-century west-eastern divan – following in Goethe’s footsteps, Michael Kleeberg collects twelve stories that include all the problems and conflicts of our era: terrorism, fundamentalism, the clash of civilizations. From Lebanon and Iran all the way to the Hessian provinces – in the end, the vision of a humanist utopia emerges in which people can be friends with each other despite all their differences. A major, ambitious coup of world literature!“ – Deutschlandradio Kultur
"Michael Kleeberg has this willingness to forget his identity (not his existence or culture). He is willing to approach the other without readymade categories." – Abbas Beydoun
