Herscht 07769

In the small German town of Kana, Florian—a mentally fragile young man living in a decaying high-rise—becomes consumed by apocalyptic visions after his physics tutor, Herr Köhler, explains the theoretical implications of antimatter and particle physics. Misunderstanding these scientific concepts as harbingers of imminent universal destruction, Florian frantically writes letters to Chancellor Angela Merkel while finding solace only in the transcendent perfection of Johann Sebastian Bach's music. His desperate search for meaning and stability leads him into the orbit of a charismatic figure known simply as the Boss, who runs a neo-Nazi cell that conducts surveillance of Bach-related sites throughout Thuringia, ostensibly protecting them from vandalism but harboring darker ideological purposes.

As Florian becomes increasingly entangled with the Boss's extremist network, the boundaries between his quantum physics paranoia and the very real dangers surrounding him begin to blur. When Herr Köhler mysteriously disappears, Florian's world fragments further, leaving him caught between his terror of cosmic annihilation and his growing unease about the violent tendencies of his Nazi associates. The Boss manipulates Florian's vulnerability and intellectual confusion, using him as both a useful tool and a potential scapegoat while the cell's activities escalate from surveillance to more sinister operations. Meanwhile, the community of Kana watches nervously as strange incidents multiply—vandalism at Bach sites, unexplained explosions, and eventually a wolf attack that seems to herald some deeper disturbance in the natural order.

The novel's experimental, fragmented prose mirrors Florian's disintegrating mental state as he struggles to comprehend both the cosmic and political forces that seem to be converging around him. Krasznahorkai weaves together themes of scientific misunderstanding, the seductive power of extremist ideology, and the redemptive possibility of high art through Bach's music, which serves as Florian's only anchor in an increasingly chaotic world. The narrative builds toward a violent confrontation as the Nazi cell's members turn on each other, with Florian ultimately forced to confront the deadly consequences of his associations and the dangerous gap between his intellectual pretensions and his fundamental naivety about human nature and political manipulation.