With Liebesbrand, Feridun Zaimoglu proved to be a great Romantic. His new novel Hinterland pursues this Romantic trail to the limits of modern civilisation.
This novel digresses and wanders off at a tangent. It takes the reader on a journey from east European cities to a North Sea island, from Prague to Berlin, Istanbul, Ankara, the island of Föhr and back again. It portrays people who have their head in the clouds and people who are passionately in love: people who meet, follow or avoid each other, who are all tangled up in a great relationship which they barely understand.
At the centre of the story are Ferda and Aneschka who meet in Prague but separate and go their own ways every now and then. Ferda sets off for Turkey where he gets involved in a family gathering and arranged marriages, while Aneschka follows her penfriend Helen, the daughter of a photographer, to Berlin. There she meets Ferda again, returns to Prague with him but their emotions are in turmoil. Irrationality gets the upper hand, dwarves meet knights, witches’ brooms and centaury.
Trained by German Romanticism, inspired by oriental imagery and powerful emotions, Feridun Zaimoglu creates a stirring episodic novel full of fascinating characters who are caught up in a dream-like web. Different perspectives are integrated, conflicts are fuelled and linked to each other, the upper- and the underworld are illuminated and over and over again, the manifestations of love in our times are pursued.
