The Snake Tree

Uwe Timm’s novel tells the story of the German construction engineer Wagner who goes to work as a manager for a paper factory in South America and gets entangled in a web of corruption, superstition and violence. He tries to solve his personal problems through spatial distance but is tortured by self-doubts. The confident attempts by Europeans to appropriate the “Foreign” and to expand their civilization across the globe, lead to a process of their own expulsion that unleashes apocalyptic horrors.