Hannes Felix’s wife leaves him. She can’t stand his coldness any longer and packs her bags – but unfortunately she does it all wrongly. Her husband’s attempts to introduce order to the chaotic contents of the case are the last straw for her. But being by himself gives Hannes the chance to dedicate his undivided attention to his vision of maximum order without outside interference.
Jens Sparschuh portrays an obsessive character and a collective phenomenon that many of us will be able to identify with: the need to develop strategies that bring order to our lives and our things. His hero ends up in just the right place at NOAH: the company that specialises in new ways to optimise domestic order has great hopes of Hannes, but his ideas for stimulating business take on increasingly grotesque and strange proportions:
“What I now have in mind is the following, simplified “everything-under-one-roof” solution: in the yellow and blue Swedish furniture store, we select cupboards and shelves of our choice. The brown flatpacks are transported directly, without detours, via conveyor belt or pneumatic dispatch system from the self-service delivery hall to NOAH’s self-service warehouse located right next door. There, skilled staff as-semble, on the spot, in other words, in the customer’s cubicle, the furniture into which the customer can immediately start to store his things. This directly connects the Swedish furniture store with NOAH. The homeowner finally gets the space he needs. He regains his home and is free to develop his full potential because he no longer has to negotiate his way around strange furnishing which get in the way and dictate where he goes in his completely cluttered-up home. With the removal of said furnishings, sufficient space is created so that the homeowner can decide this way, or that way, or the other way – the basic requirement for personal freedom."
With linguistic skill and sensitivity, Jens Sparschuh succeeds in creating a sympathetic and highly neurotic modern-day Don Quixote whom the reader accompanies on his search for a new, perfect form order with anxious optimism and enormous pleasure right to the bitter end.
