With his debut novel Henning Ziebritzki explores the childhood of an attentive boy between the harsh everyday life of a village, adults shaped by the experience of war and his first poetic impressions
Through the memories and stories of a boy growing up in the village of Brand, the family and inhabitants come to life, as does the background of contemporary history and the Northern German landscape. The story is set in the sixties, known by adults as the post-war period. Encountering August, a strange boy, a first erotic impression made by the teacher in the schoolyard and the great-grandmother as well as the dead grandfather characterise the child just as much as the test of courage of the pig ride, a threatening encounter with a stranger at the harvest festival or experiences with the supernatural while fetching milk and the first reading of a poem by Goethe. His mother’s stories about the village and its inhabitants play a special part, having a lasting influence on the boy and becoming his first poetic experiences.
In vivid and poetic language, Henning Ziebritzki depicts impressive scenes of a childhood in the countryside.
Henning Ziebritzki, born 1961 in Wunstorf (Lower Saxony), lives in Tübingen and Berlin. He writes poems, essays and narrative prose. He was awarded the ›Peter-Huchel-Preis‹ for German-language poetry in 2020 for his highly acclaimed poetry collection »Vogelwerk« (2019). Most recently, the essay collection »Gar nicht viel« (2023) was published. »Brand« is his first novel.
