Dietmar Dath
Encyclopedia
German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
novelist.
Life
Dath grew up in SchopfheimSchopfheim
Schopfheim is a town in the district of Lörrach in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is situated on the river Wiese, 10 km north of Rheinfelden, and 13 km east of Lörrach.The town is the birthplace of Gisela Oeri....
, finished the high school in Freiburg, did his civilian service
Zivildienst
Zivildienst is the civilian branch of the national service systems in Austria and Switzerland. In Germany as well Zivildienst was the alternative service to military service until suspension of conscription in 2011...
and studied mathematics
Mathematics
Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...
and German studies
German studies
German studies is the field of humanities that researches, documents, and disseminates German language and literature in both its historic and present forms. Academic departments of German studies often include classes on German culture, German history, and German politics in addition to the...
in Freiburg.
Since 1990 he published articles and stories about social themes and popular culture
Popular culture
Popular culture is the totality of ideas, perspectives, attitudes, memes, images and other phenomena that are deemed preferred per an informal consensus within the mainstream of a given culture, especially Western culture of the early to mid 20th century and the emerging global mainstream of the...
in various magazines. He translated works of Joe Lansdale, Kodwo Eshun
Kodwo Eshun
Kodwo Eshun is a British-Ghanaian writer, theorist and film-maker. He studied English Literature at University College, Oxford University and Romanticism and Modernism MA Hons at Southampton University...
and Buddy Giovinazzo
Buddy Giovinazzo
Buddy Giovinazzo is an independent filmmaker and author who is known for his gritty-low budget debut film, Combat Shock, and his collection of harrowing short stories of low urban life in his 1993 novel, Life is Hot in Cracktown....
into German.
Dath was chief editor of the Spex
Spex (magazine)
Spex is a prominent German rock and pop culture magazine located in Berlin, Germany. Besides music news, Spex also covers literature, cinema, fashion and contemporary social trends...
music magazine from 1998 to 2000. From 2001 to 2007 he was journalist at the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , short F.A.Z., also known as the FAZ, is a national German newspaper, founded in 1949. It is published daily in Frankfurt am Main. The Sunday edition is the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung .F.A.Z...
. Dath is married. In 2008 he received the promotion award of the Lessing prize for criticism.
Phonon
Phonon (full title translated: Phonon or state without name) is a typical work for Dath as it brings together all key aspects of his writing as popular culture, especially music, left wing political ideology and exaggerated fantastic and horror elements. The main character Martin Mahr works for the fictional music magazine Phonon, that can easily be identified with the “Spex” magazine Dath worked for. Here Germany has become a monarchy after World War II, its female emperor Patrizia reigns by horoscopes and people live in gigantic trees. A conspiracy of dark figures tries to exchange important people of state and magazine with robots, but an underground group called GPI tries to fight it. The novel is crammed with allusions to contemporary German literature, music and politics. In the end green slime fills all buildings, people go insane in the streets and kill each other, things become stranger and stranger.Forever in Honey
Für immer in Honig (Forever in honey) is Daths longest novel of some 1000 pages. Here reanimated zombie armies, which do very much look like Nazi Germany and Soviet Union troops, fight against all present mankind. A small group of super heroes with outstanding abilities are the key figures in defeating the zombies. Several of them know each other from their teenage years in a small town in south-west GermanyBaden-Württemberg
Baden-Württemberg is one of the 16 states of Germany. Baden-Württemberg is in the southwestern part of the country to the east of the Upper Rhine, and is the third largest in both area and population of Germany's sixteen states, with an area of and 10.7 million inhabitants...
which very much resembles Daths own home town. Long political essays are spread over the second half of the novel, a total of about 200 pages. With them Dath delivers parodies of left wing political slang of the seventies.
Selected works
- Cordula killt Dich! (Cordula kills you, novel) Berlin 1995
- Charonia Tritonis. Ein Konzert, Dumme bitte wegbleiben (Charonia Tritonis. A concert, dumb people please stay away, novella) Berlin 1997
- Skye Boat Song (novel) Berlin 2000
- Am blinden Ufer (On the blind shore, novel) Berlin 2000
- Phonon oder Staat ohne Namen (Phonon or state without name, novel) Berlin 2001
- Schwester Mitternacht. (Sister midnight, novel, written together with Barbara Kirchner) Berlin 2002
- Schöner rechnen. Die Zukunft der Computer (calculating more beautiful. The Future of the computers, essay) Berlin 2002
- Ein Preis. Halbvergessene Geschichte aus der Wahrheit (A prize. Half forgotten story out of the truth, novella) Berlin 2003
- Für immer in Honig (Forever in honey, novel) Berlin 2005
- Die salzweißen Augen. Vierzehn Briefe über Drastik und Deutlichkeit (The salt-white eyes. Fourteen letters about graphic and clarity, essays) Frankfurt 2005
- Dirac (novel) Frankfurt 2006
- Waffenwetter (Arms weather, novel) Frankfurt 2007
- Das versteckte Sternbild (The hidden constellation, novel, under the pseudonym David Dalek) Berlin 2007
- Maschinenwinter. Wissen, Technik, Sozialismus. Eine Streitschrift. Frankfurt 2008 (edition unseld)
- Die Abschaffung der Arten (novel) Frankfurt 2008