Fallen from place and time: “the brother of all images”

Berlin. Adi Shmook is an old journalist. He receives information by landline and for appointments he drives in a distinctly orange Mustang.

This old woman is twice the age of young editor Mooney, who follows the heels of her local newspaper’s grotesque sports reporter in George Klein’s new novel “Brother of All Pictures.” Together they are on the trail of an ominous story about the local stadium. At first anyway. Because the author gradually leaves the small town of the old Federal Republic falling out of time and space.

True, the 68-year-old East Frisian approaches his novel – unlike its predecessor “Micro”, where the buildings took on an ideal life of their own – extraordinarily realistic. But this world too is gradually opening up to spirituality somewhere on the border with the afterlife and the space between the living and the dead. Klein fills his first journalistic satire with ornaments and symbols that require careful reading, but always wink.

With “Brother of All Pictures”, it offers not a strictly told story, but a fascinating game of storytelling between imitations of reality and the paranormal – and with a creative twist at the end.

– George Klein: Brother of All Pictures, Rowohlt, 272 pages, €22.00, ISBN 978-3-498-03584-6 .

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