The Death Of Three Men. Novel

Like a Hall of Mirrors at the fairground, this book is a piece of grotesquerie which takes ignorance, repressed rage and self-centredness to absurd extremes.

Karl Karst anticipates the end of his life with airy nonchalance. No, he is not in the least at odds with the swelling-up of his not-inconsiderable girth, which is now ballooning on a daily basis. In the end, he bursts.

Carlo Schäfer takes up the pen where Nikolai Gogol, Franz Kafka und Daniil Charms put theirs down. He writes about our mad, grotesque world: the work is by turns concise, precise, bizarre, humorous and hard-hitting. We have here a novel which subtly weaves miniatures into a real firecracker.

“The Death Of Three Men: Concerning the going home of Karl Karst, of Fat Herr Konrad, and of the one calling himself David; also medicine, Protestant lay missionary work, pest control and theodicy” – to give it its full title – is a roman noir without any apparent crimes, yet rooted in the illicit depths of the human soul.

“Carlo Schäfer has succeeded in creating a perfectly wonderful literary gem!” Anne Kuhlmeyer, Wort & Tat