Juli Zeh and Simon Urban: “Between Worlds” – book tip

Even before the book was published, opinions about the book were circulating in the press and on social media. The novel deserves a well-meaning reader.

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What went wrong? When a book is on everyone’s lips and torn up before it’s published, it’s hard to resist the storm of loud voices. That’s what happened to Juli Zeh and Simon Urban with “Between Worlds”, a WhatsApp novel between big city and province. Reason enough to take a closer look at the book once it’s published.

Juli Zeh, Simon Urban “Between Worlds”: About the Book

Twenty years have passed: When Stefan and Theresa accidentally cross paths in Hamburg, their first reunion ends in disaster. When they were students they were like family to each other, today there is hardly anything they have in common. Stefan has made a career for Germany’s largest weekly newspaper DER BOTE, Theresa has taken over her father’s farm in Brandenburg. The different life plans have become contradictory attitudes…

The displeasure of the preliminary criticism is possibly based on an interview in the NZZ, in which the two of them said things that were rather suboptimal, wrong, for example regarding the entry of the AfD into the Bundestag. July Zeh dated this one to 2013, not 2017. Well, alright. But this interview has nothing to do with the content of the novel. And the question always arises as to whether you can’t read the book without the trappings and just let the text sink in.

Of course, reading is a blessing. For the individual and for humanity. But does one have to write something about what is read, about which something is then written, about which hosts of educated people argue, in order to then document the dispute and discuss the documentation in the arts pages?

The book may, some reviewers agree, be simply written. But if you look inside, you realize that it is a novel consisting of WhatsApp and e-mails from the two main characters, who meet again by chance 20 years after their shared flat share. Thus, there is the exchange of the two again. This can’t be highly polished prose. She has taken over her father’s farm and can hardly breathe between the barn and the computer, he is the arts editor of a large weekly newspaper and enjoys life in the big city. But isn’t it sometimes the unspectacular that gives rise to great stories?