They found the love of their life, their first child is on the way and they are about to move to the countryside – away from their chosen home that is Berlin. They hope for all-encompassing happiness, but the only thing that is all-encompass- ing is disintegration: relationships are cast in a different light, conventional role models are broken down; yet failing at life’s challenges is inevitable. Love turns to hate and suddenly separation is an impeding possibility.
In various literary fragments, primal conflicts are relived through protagonists who struggle to find their way in today’s meritocracy, who are similar, who may be related to each other and whose lives seem mysteriously connected – almost as in the work of great writer Roberto Cotti, who becomes the lodestar in this literary cosmos of failure.
The montage novel »Life Without Consequences« is provocative in an almost political way, touching on a personal level and shows the fragility of prosperity. Bursting with life, the novel oscillates between the bottomlessly tragic and the absurdly comic. Layering, mirroring and contrasting tech- niques gradually come together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.
Roman Graf, born in 1978 in Winterthur, had various jobs after completing his apprenticeship as a forest warden, and studied at the School of Applied Linguistics in Zurich and at the German Literature Institute in Leipzig. He has been living in Germany since 2003 and has published the novels »Herr Blanc«, »Niedergang« and »Mädchen für Morris« as well as the poetry collection »Zur Irrfahrt verführt«.
