Jan Costin Wagner

Jan Costin Wagner, 2012

Jan Costin Wagner (born October 13, 1972 in Langen (Hessen) ) is a German writer . He was best known for his detective novels about the Finnish inspector Kimmo Joentaa.

Life

After graduating from the Adolf-Reichwein-Gymnasium in Heusenstamm , Wagner completed a degree in German and history at the University of Frankfurt am Main , which he completed with a master's thesis on Adalbert Stifter . So far he has written eight crime novels, six of which are set in Finland and have the melancholy detective Kimmo Joentaa, who is mourning his late wife, as the protagonist. The Joentaa novels have been translated into 14 languages.

Jan Costin Wagner is an active member of the German national team of authors . He lives near Frankfurt am Main and in Finland , his wife's home.

plant

Wagner's series of novels about the Finnish inspector Kimmo Joentaa is often counted as part of the Scandinavian crime thriller subgenre , even though the author himself does not come from Scandinavia . According to his own admission, he never thought about a connection to the Scandinavian crime tradition, but wanted to achieve “that the setting of a novel reflects the thoughts of the characters”. When creating the character Kimmo Joentaa, he immediately thought of Finland and involuntarily located the opening image of a commissioner sitting by the bed of his dying wife in Eismond : “Not because Finland is sad, but because I like Finland from the bottom of my heart and deeply inside me sluggish". The country that has become his second home is a “universal place” and suitable for a “fundamentally human history”. Elsewhere he described Finland as the “land of contrasts”, which still puzzles him and for that reason is particularly suitable as a setting for detective novels.

According to Uwe Wittstock's verdict , Wagner writes “no thrillers , no action orgies, but precisely balanced psychological studies, as poetic and melancholy as a snowy winter landscape.” According to Sandra Kegel, he uses the genre to explore boundaries. Wagner likes to subvert the expectations of readers and rejects stereotyped thinking and genre boundaries. For him, a book like The Light in a Dark House is as much a romance novel as it is a detective novel. His literary role models are not typical crime fiction authors, but Adalbert Stifter, ETA Hoffmann and Friedrich Dürrenmatt . The drive behind his literature is "to bring people into the most extreme possible situations" in order to then find a language for their attempts at coping. By raising basic fears, he also brings them under control.

His protagonist Kimmo Joentaa, whom Elmar Krekeler describes as the “silent, great mourner among the investigators of this world”, is often “more of a grieving comforter than a detective”. Joentaa comes to terms with a traumatic loss when his wife Sanna dies of cancer. The first novel in the Eismond series is about his handling of this loss, which is also present in the following volumes of the series. It is precisely from this experience that the Commissioner has “a warm, unconventional view of life” and the strength and patience to help other mourners. It stands for not remaining in sadness, but rather coping with blows of fate and living with them. Towards his fellow human beings, he exudes a “silent warmth” that Wagner considers typically Finnish. Originally, Kimmo Joentaa was not planned as a series character, which is why the author added a whole series of other main characters to his side in Das Schweigen . Nevertheless, he remains the "secret central figure" who absorbs the drama of the people and thus carries the whole story. In the following volumes, in which Joentaa lives with a prostitute named Larissa, Wagner wanted to continue the development of the figure.

According to Vanja Budde, "a painfully wistful mood" permeates Wagner's novels, the style is reduced to the bare essentials, "crystal clear like the lakes in Finland". According to Christoph Schröder, the author's view of his characters is “a mixture of sympathy and cool distance”. The language gets along without any loyalty or pathos . It is “reserved, economical, focused on details that reflect the big picture”, a “language of silence”, behind which empathy and observation are hidden. Ralph Gerstenberg believes that “ empty spaces , space for the unspoken, atmospheric descriptions that make up the unmistakable sound of his language” are characteristic of Wagner's style . ”According to Tobias Becker, the author can“ create cinematic precise scenes with strong images. Write concise, powerful dialogues. Dab laconic sentences, “which one would prefer to read out loud. Even if current topics form the background of the plot in some novels - such as the days of the last snow, the financial crisis, prostitution and the mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik - Wagner is not primarily concerned with social debates, but rather “with life and death. About death and how we live with it. "

Awards

• 2002 Marlowe - National category for night driving
• 2003 residency grant from the Berlin Senate at the Berlin Literary Colloquium
• 2004 Hans-Erich-Nossack-Prize sponsorship award
• 2008 German Crime Prize (3rd place) for Das Schweigen
• 2012 Crime of the Year 2011 (10th place) in the KrimiZEIT best list for The Light in a Dark House

Works

• Night drive. Eichborn, Frankfurt am Main 2002, ISBN 3-8218-0700-8 . (Detective novel)
• Ice moon. Eichborn, Frankfurt am Main 2003, ISBN 3-8218-0699-0 . (Detective novel of the Kimmo-Joentaa series)
• Shadow day. Eichborn, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 3-8218-0756-3 . (Detective novel)
• The silence. Eichborn, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-8218-0757-7 . (Detective novel of the Kimmo-Joentaa series)
• In winter the lions. Eichborn, Frankfurt am Main 2009, ISBN 978-3-8218-0758-4 . (Detective novel of the Kimmo-Joentaa series)
• Sandman dreams. Edition Nautilus, Hamburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-89401-603-6 ; as an audio book (read by Burghart Klaußner ) at Audiobook Hamburg 2010, ISBN 978-3-86909-053-5 . (Crime story)
• The light in a dark house. Galiani Verlag, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-86971-016-7 . (Detective novel of the Kimmo-Joentaa series)
• Days of the last snow . Galiani Verlag, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-86971-017-4 . (Detective novel of the Kimmo-Joentaa series)
• Sun reflection. Galiani Verlag, Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-86971-112-6 . (Stories)
• Sakari learns to walk through walls . Galiani Verlag, Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-462-31748-0 . (Detective novel of the Kimmo-Joentaa series)
• Summer at night. Galiani Verlag, Berlin 2020, ISBN 978-3-86971-208-6 . (Detective novel)

Radio plays

• 2008: Das Schweigen , WDR , director: Annette Kurth , 54'29 min.

Film adaptations

• The last silence . Director: Baran bo Odar , D 2010. Based on the novel Das Schweigen .
• Days of the last snow . Director: Lars-Gunnar Lotz , D 2019. Based on the novel of the same name.

Web links

• Literature by and about Jan Costin Wagner in the catalog of the German National Library
• Official website (unsecured connection)
• Jan Costin Wagner reads from "The Last Days of Snow"

Individual evidence

1. ^ David Vuko: Reading by Jan Costin Wagner. In: Adolf-Reichwein-Gymnasium Heusenstamm. May 2, 2017. Retrieved July 18, 2019 . 
2. ↑ ^{a b} Uwe Wittstock : Who comes from the cold . In: Focus . 4th January 2014.
3. ↑ Katharina Wantoch: Interview with Jan Costin Wagner . In: Brigitte . July 27, 2007.
4. ^ ^{A b c} Sylvia Staude: "Happy authors have a passion" . In: Frankfurter Rundschau . July 21, 2011.
5. ↑ ^{a b c} Ralph Gerstenberg: Encounters with the worst possible . In: Deutschlandfunk . 19th September 2014.
6. ^ ^{A b} Jan Costin Wagner - crime writer and Finland fan. ( Memento from March 15, 2015 in the web archive archive.today ) In: hr-info . October 12, 2014.
7. ↑ Sandra Kegel: What does the lonely tear from old times want? In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . August 12, 2011.
8. ↑ Katharina Wantoch: Interview with Jan Costin Wagner . In: Brigitte . July 27, 2007.
9. ↑ Hendrik Werner: Ice cold look . In: The world . June 30, 2007.
10. ↑ ^{a b} Vanja Budde : Search for intensity . In: Deutschlandradio Kultur . March 4, 2009.
11. ↑ Elmar Krekeler: The most brutal snowflake in crime history . In: The world . January 10, 2014.
12. ↑ Christoph Schröder: Language of Silence. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . 23rd January 2014.
13. ↑ Tobias Becker: Krimi by Jan Costin Wagner: The silent one determines again . In: Spiegel Online . January 8, 2014.
14. ↑ As long as it appears again , novel review in the Frankfurter Rundschau of November 17, 2017, accessed January 26, 2018
15. ↑ First place in the December 2017 best crime list , accessed on January 26, 2018.