Literary Fiction
August 2020
Down the Elbe
by Thilo Krause
After years away, a young couple returns to the strange rocky landscape of the Sächsische Schweiz. The desire to start afresh in the place where they spent their childhoods puts them on a collision course with their home town and leads to a new feeling of alienation. What happens to the individual in a society which rejects everything that’s different? Is it just homesickness that has driven them back? The narrator keeps it a secret from his girlfriend Christina, also he feels guilty towards Vito, the school friend who lost a leg during a climbing trip together. He now returns to this place, recalling formative moments in his life: the accident, the public shaming at school during the raising of the socialist flag, his decision to break away. But his first attempt at reconciliation fails.Thilo Krause’s debut novel tells the story of a couple returning to a setting that feels foreign to them. He casts his eye across a landscape of apple trees and Elbe meadows, but also neo-Nazi summer camps. Ultimately, the couple’s fresh start is threatened by the distrust of the villagers. A powerful novel about our country and the times we live in.
