House in the Sun

  • The Magic Mountain meets Michel Houellebecq 
  • "an intricate masterpiece" - FAZ
  • Shortlisted for the German Book Prize 2025
  • Shortlisted for the Wilhelm Raabe Prize 2025
  • #10 of the SPIEGEL Literature Prize Countdown 2025
  • Recommended for translation by New Books in German
  • Recommended for translation by Litrix.de
  • English sample by Adrian Nathan West available

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 “House in the Sun”, 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?

House in the Sun explores how a society and state can manage the increasing number of mentally ill individuals in the long term. It provocatively asks whether it's more efficient and cost-effective to simply abolish them.

Plumbing the depths of our longings and death drives, Thomas Melle offers a radical sketch of the human condition.

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  • Publisher: Kiepenheuer&Witsch
  • Release: 14.08.2025
  • ISBN: 978-3-462-00465-6
  • 320 Pages
  • Author: Thomas Melle
House in the Sun
Thomas Melle House in the Sun
Regina Schmeken
© Regina Schmeken
Thomas Melle

Thomas Melle , born in 1975, is an author and translator. His debut novel  Sickster  (2011) was nominated for the German Book Prize and received the Franz Hessel Prize for Contemporary Literature. He followed it up with the novels  3000 Euro (2014), Die Welt im Rücken  ( The World at My Back ) (2016) and House in the Sun (2024), all of which were shortlisted for the German Book Prize. His books have been  translated into more than 20 languages . 

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