Dramaturgie im zeitgenössischen Tanz ist ? positiv gemeint ? ein heißes Eisen. Idealerweise sind Dramaturginnen und Dramaturgen während der Erarbeitung eines Stücks die besten Freunde der Choreografen. more
Norbert Scheuer: "The Rushing of the Weir" (Überm Rauschen)
C.H. Beck Verlag
English excerpt
The book: There was a time when the brothers and their father had gone fishing together. The sound of water rushing over the dam behind the inn where they lived in the Eifel, filled their childhood with inklings and fantasies. But their father, whose angling always amounted to a search for the primordial fish, mythical and enormous, is long dead. And the older brother, Hermann, was taken away, had to go to the clinic, lost his mind, his fate is uncertain.
The first-person narrator is the younger brother who has returned to the scene of his childhood to help his family. He stands in the river, fishing, mentally reviewing the life of his brother, his own life, and that of his family. Exhausted and yet hyper-alert, the narrator attempts to piece together the memories, conversations, events, and observations and find explanations: his childhood by the river, his first love, the quirky guests at his parents’ inn, his brother's attempts to run away, the decline of the tavern, the river and the fish, the death of his brother's occasional mistress from Holland, and the unresolved question of his own biological father.
The author: Norbert Scheuer was born in 1951 and has an academic background in physical technology and philosophy. His collection of stories entitled "The Rooster King" was published in 1993, followed in 1997 by a volume of poetry "An Echo of All", and a novel "The Stone Collector" in 1999. C.H. Beck published his novel "Downstream" (2002) and "Kall in the Eifel" (2006), a novel in stories. Norbert Scheuer has received numerous literary prizes, most recently the Martha Saalfeld Prize (2003), the 3-sat Prize at the Ingeborg Bachmann competition (2006), and the Glaser Prize (2006). He works as a systems programmer.
Photo © C. H. Beck Verlag