House in the Sun

Following his internationally acclaimed autofictional novel The World at My Back, a brilliant literary exploration of living with bipolar disorder, Thomas Melle now presents a novel that delves deeper into the boundaries between autobiography and fiction, longing and depression, and –  ultimately – life and death.

How much self-determination is possible when mental illness controls your life? What does someone who feels they have nothing left to lose truly long for? And what might ultimate happiness look like? Welcome to the “Haus zur Sonne,” an institution that is both a wish-fulfillment machine and an abolition apparatus. Here, people who are tired of life or terminally ill voluntarily enter this state-funded clinic to have every conceivable wish granted – before quietly departing from life. But do those who no longer want to live really want to die? Plumbing the depths of our longings and death drives, Thomas Melle offers a radical sketch of the human condition.