A man searching for the meaning of life – a touching literary ›road movie‹
A. W. Mumme, a well-known radio essayist, receives a letter from pension insurance and begins to question himself: is a pension of 1,183 euros all he has left after a long working life? A literary agent’s idea to write a popular autobiography appears just at the right time. Mumme uses a generous advance to buy a »retro motorbike«. He sets off on a journey from Berlin via Leipzig and Paris to the Côte d’Azur, where, in an hour of inner paralysis, his concept of meaning – regarding life and society – shatters. There is no turning back. In this novel Mumme’s life is reflected in the presented self-images of the protagonist: the rootless child of a hippie mother; a young man in a gloomy city of intellectual movements called West Berlin; a glamorous media man at the side of a no less glamorous woman; a friend of a dandy artist – a decades-long friendship that does not survive the political strains of a pandemic. The notion that really haunts Mumme is the stereotype of the ›old white man‹ (German: ›alter weißer Mann‹), which he definitely doesn’t want to be – but whose abbreviation, AWM, can be found in his name.
Ulf Erdmann Ziegler tells the story of a man searching for the meaning of his past – as well as for the purpose of his future – in a humorous, melancholic and moving manner.
Ulf Erdmann Ziegler, born in 1959, studied photography in Dortmund and later literature and psychology in Berlin. His first novel, »Hamburger Hochbahn«, focussed on architecture, »Nichts Weißes« on typography and »Und jetzt du, Orlando!« on the cinema. »Nichts Weißes« was shortlisted for ›Deutscher Buchpreis‹. He was awarded the ›Hebbel-Preis‹ for his first two books published by Wallstein. In addition to literature, Ziegler writes essays, art criticism and occasional obituaries for taz, Deutschlandfunk and Monopol. »No Turning Back« is his fifth novel.
