Under the sun (stories)

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Under the sun is a volume with stories by the German-Austrian author Daniel Kehlmann , which was first published in 1998 by Deuticke Verlag with 6 stories. The new edition by Rowohlt Verlag from 2008 contains 8 stories. The short stories are about people who escape their everyday lives and want to upgrade and change their existence through special experiences.

content

New edition 2008


  1. Bank robbery In the first story, a senior bank employee pressed a wrong key and a huge amount of money was transferred to Markus Mehring's account. The protagonist leads a regular life and works in an official building. After initial hesitation, however, he withdraws the entire amount, closes his account and flees to a distant country.
  2. Killing
    This story tells a day in the life of a 14-year-old on a hot summer day. The young person tries to escape the boredom of a suburban settlement by following a spontaneous inspiration to throw a stone from a bridge onto the street below, thereby causing a car accident. This sense of achievement causes him to then poison the neighboring dog. Both acts go unnoticed. In the end, the juvenile offender feels sublime and liberated.
  3. Unter der Sonne
    The title story of the book of stories describes the journey of the literary scholar Kramer to the grave of his study subject Bonvard, which takes him to a small French town in midsummer. After hours of searching the wrong cemetery, Kramer got on the wrong train and drove past the right grave back to Paris. Then after the futile effort he becomes aware of his failure and he has to cry.
  4. Resolution
    This story is about a man who, as a sound engineer at congresses, is confronted with the elementary questions of science. When he realizes that the interlocutors never come to an agreement, he loses his pronounced religious belief. He sinks into deep indifference and completely breaks off contact with his fellow human beings. In the end he dies lonely in a hospital.
  5. Pyr
    The first-person narrator of this story is a television electrician who takes wax prints of his customers' keys at work and breaks into their homes at night during the holiday weeks. There he distributes kerosene, which he ignites with a time fuse. From a safe distance, he then follows the explosion and the spreading fire. The pyromaniac tries to justify himself by extolling his inclination as the worship of fire, from which no one can escape.
  6. Criticism
    This story encompasses the conversation on a flight between the fear of flying actor Wagenbach and a self-proclaimed critic as a fellow traveler. During the entire flight, the defenseless Wagenbach is disturbed and violently attacked by his seat neighbor. At the end of the flight it turns out that the man himself suffers from fear of flying and only wants to suppress his own tension through his endless speech. The criticism in Wagenbach is not without traces.
  7. Lent
    In this story, the overweight Bertold is told by his doctor, Dr. Mohr advised to reduce his weight by 15 kilos. Contrary to his warning, the offended Bertold decides to follow a zero diet, which ultimately makes him fall into delirium. Nevertheless, in the end, Bertold feels a great deal of satisfaction.
  8. Snow
    The last story in the collection describes how a businessman on his way home at night gets caught in a heavy snow storm and finally has to surrender to the forces of nature.

First edition 1998

  1. Bank robbery
  2. resolution
  3. Kill
  4. Under the sun
  5. Pyr
  6. snow

Press reviews

“The strength of Kehlmann's language is its straightforwardness, the renunciation of flowery imagery that is not covered by perception. His characterization of people, the explanation of psychic drives and the description of the environment and natural processes go back to exact observation and analysis, without the language becoming karstified. [...] Then it is a little disappointing that Kehlmann doesn't think he can do without the well-worn symbolism of the end of the world. "

- Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

expenditure

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Quoted from faz.net

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