Unsere leeren Herzen (“Our Empty Hearts”) continues the essayistic-narrative explorations that Thomas Hettche began in Fahrtenbuch (“Logbook”) and Totenberg – and thus his intellectual autobiography, which also comprises his highly acclaimed work as a novelist.
Without culturally pessimistic sentimentality, but aware that metaphysical questions of meaning have become increasingly pressing in our fundamentally threatened Western societies, in his essays Thomas Hettche passionately interrogates the purpose and future of literature. Against the naïve belief that we can reproduce the world, which dominates our present and undermines literature’s promise of joy and insight, in Unsere leeren Herzen (“Our Empty Hearts”) Hettche traces the sources of another realism – indeed, of another modernity.
Thomas Hettche’s essays are in equal measure precise diagnoses of our crisis-ridden, disenchanted modernity and a brave stocktaking of his own consciousness and thoughts.
