Cherrypicker
Life is a game

In his new novel, Christoph Peters dares to play games – with literature, current political events, his own creative process and readers.

By Hendrik Nolde

Games always function according to rules. Christoph Peters novel Der Sandkasten (The Sandbox) comes complete with the author’s own rulebook. On his website, he relates how the idea of writing a contemporary novel about Berlin’s political life germinated in his mind. To ensure as topical as possible a connection to contemporary events, he set himself the condition “to use the very day when I start writing as the setting for the story – without the reflective distance I have always needed before and without the knowledge of hindsight“. As chance had it, perhaps manipulated by the game leader, the book’s genesis was on 9 November 2020. This historically significant date was a grey autumn day in the middle of the second wave of the global COVID 19 pandemic, shortly after Donald Trump was voted out of office as U.S. President.

By applying this stylised creation myth to his novel, Peters playfully shirks responsibility for the issues discussed. According to the logic of his literary game, they, like the novel’s structure, were, so to speak, imposed on him. The preface points out that “parallels of motif and composition with Wolfgang Koeppen‘s novel The Hothouse are intentional and part of the game”.

From hothouse to sandbox

Koeppen‘s novel is regarded as a post-war German literary classic. The title refers both to the sometimes tropical location of Bonn, West Germany’s former federal capital, in the Rhine valley basin and to the political climate of the stuffily conservative Adenauer era. Peters takes up his forerunner’s motifs and plot structures, applying them to Berlin at the tail-end of Angela Merkel’s term of office. Peters‘ title, too, has a twofold purpose, referring to the sand of the Brandenburg marches on which Berlin is built, and to the state of its politics. The sandbox represents a political culture of infantility and power games that “degenerated long ago into senseless ritual, theatrics of democracy“.

The players in this theatre are quite easy to identify. Like Koeppen, Peters has written a roman à clef. Well-known German politicians, such as Karl Lauterbach, Christian Lindner and Wolfgang Kubicki, are easily discernible behind his narrative figures. It remains an open question whether the novel’s overdrawn personalities are attributable to Peters‘ style or whether they are closer to reality than we might like. The explicit statement that any apparent resemblance to actual people is “coincidental or due to the unalterable laws of human nature“ is part of the literary game, however.

There is no let-up in the hothouse mugginess in Peters‘ novel either - it hangs all-pervasively over the sandbox in Berlin-Mitte. His protagonist, relentlessly ageing radio presenter Kurt Siebenstädter, is a constantly perspiring, perennially driven, yet utterly anachronistic political player. ”In truth, he believed nothing, and ultimately he did not even believe that.“ Predictably, in a world that increasingly demands clear statements of beliefs, there is no future for such brutally honest nihilism. The prospect of Siebenstädter‘s downfall is mapped out not least by his literary forebear – Koeppen’s Hothouse is part of the so-called Trilogy of Failure.

No Siebenstädter Day

Stylistically, Peters‘ novel is part of the literary modernist tradition, sometimes reminiscent of Ulysses, Irish writer James Joyce’s masterpiece. Readers accompany the protagonist for a day on what are at times apparently mythical forays through the eerily deserted metropolis. The narrative is characterised by meandering internal monologues, giving direct insights into Siebenstädter’s inner life. These do not always make for enjoyable reading. Our anti-hero is an old white man in the worst sense and not a likeable person. Siebenstädter’s ever-harassed nature definitely creates a pull effect, however, and presumably, the drastic exaggeration of his character is also part of the game with readers.

Ulysses takes place on 16 June, and to commemorate its protagonist, Leopold Bloom, Joyce enthusiasts around the world celebrate “Bloomsday” every year on that day. It is hardly likely that anyone will celebrate “Siebenstädter Day“ on 9 November anytime soon, not only on account of the date’s historical significance.