Max Czollek: Zweifelssohn

Max Czollek presents his debut novel at the 30th Erfurt Autumn Reading Festival

Zweifelssohn—whose name evokes the Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, though for him doubt takes center stage—travels from Vienna through various German cities all the way to Rügen. On his journey, he seeks guidance in a world that seems increasingly marked by uncertainty, tension, and violence.

Whether on the train, during encounters with strangers, on vacation with his girlfriend, or alone in a hotel: time and again, Zweifelssohn encounters signs of social and personal violence. As a Jew, he perceives many things with particular acuity and views Germany from a perspective shaped equally by history and the present. He cannot escape this perspective—and that is precisely why he is haunted by the question of how violence arises and why it keeps returning. He tries in vain to cling to the surface of life: to fashion, music, excesses, and the promises of the present. Yet violence inexorably forces its way into his consciousness, as a premonition of a future that has already begun.

In his debut novel, Max Czollek offers a perspective on our times that is as insightful as it is haunting. Somewhere between pop culture and the apocalypse, between sharp wit and existential uncertainty, he tells of a present marked by insecurity. A highly topical, emotional, and bitterly funny novel about identity, memory, and the question of how to find one’s place in a world that has become fragile.

Max Czollek, born in 1987, is an author living in Berlin. He is co-editor of the magazine*Jalta – Positionen zur jüdischen Gegenwart*, a member of the poetry collective G13, a curator at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin, city writer for Rheinsberg, and DAAD Distinguished Chair in Contemporary Poetics, New York 2024. “Zweifelssohn” is his first novel.

Moderator:Eric Marr