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Dietmar Dath: The Abolition of the Species (Die Abschaffung der Arten)
Novel
Hardcover | 600 pages | ISBN 9783518420218 | Sep 2008 | Suhrkamp Verlag
English excerpt
The book: The age we know is long past. Where Europe once was, there are now only three labyrinthine cities that have grown up, rather than been built. The world belongs to the animals. Fishes argue about sodomy, hawk-headed female theologians search in archives for evidence of mankind and Cyrus Golden, the lion, runs the three-city state. When a powerful enemy threatens the new society, he sends out the wolf Dmitri as a diplomat to search for an ally in the former North America. The journey by night across the ocean and into the deep tunnels of natural history teaches the wolf dangerous things about war, art and politics and takes him to the edge of his world where he realises "why what happened to humans happened to them".
Dietmar Dath joins the tradition of Voltaire and Jules Verne, of Thomas Morus and Mary Shelley. His novel tells of the downfall and rebirth of civilisation. It is a fantastic love song, an epic meditation on the theory of evolution.
The author: Dietmar Dath, born 1970 in Schopfheim, is a writer and translator living in Freiburg and Frankfurt am Main. He has been editor-in-chief of Spex (1998-2000) and an editor at the Frankfurter Allgemeiner Zeitung (2001-2007). His novels, non-fiction and articles subvert, rise above and traverse the boundaries of genre and imagination, and do so systematically. In 2008, he received the Förderpreis zum Lessing-Preis für Kritik.
Photo: © Uwe Dettmar
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