Shortlisted for the 'aspekte-prize' for Best Debut 2008

Gunther Geltinger – Man Angel

fiction

272pp (71,000 words)

English sample translation (pdf)

Lisez un extrait en français

Leonard Engel’s initial love for his friend Marius quickly gives way to emptiness and the feeling, that “there is something fundamentally wrong” with himself. He flees from erotic confusions and artificial excesses to Vienna to study, where the intrigues of his fellow-sufferer Feline drive him into the arms of the rent-boy Tiago. Neither a leap into the Danube, nor leaving for the south of France to see his sister, promise an escape from the nightmare. Only through meeting Boris does the restless search find a goal. As not the fact of Engel being gay is the core of the matter but his characteristic trait giving reason to the most grotesque and bitterly serious scenes: Engel's apparent incompetence to and his desire for love, both not letting him realize which world it is he belongs to, the one of humans or the one of angels.

This is the passionate self-portrait of a young man searching for his own truth. On the way it relates why life really is impossible to survive, and if it’s possible, only with the help of literature.

A powerful debut, whose virtuoso interplay of narrative voices interrogates the credibility of memory and consistent narrative.

»Full of images and rich in language, without any false modesty, Gunther Geltinger’s story is written with a refreshingly timeless passion.«
Joachim Helfer

Rights sold

Bulgaria – Lege Artis
Czech Republic - Kniha Zlín
Spain - Pre-Textos
The Netherlands - Ambo|Anthos

first serial US – Words Without Borders

paperback - Suhrkamp

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Reviews

»Without doubt one of the most stunning debuts of the season. (...) Geltinger juggles several perspectives with virtuosity, sparking a bold competition between inside and outside views, and between rivaling narrative authorities. They all rush forward into the spotlight of the narration, each of them striking an entirely new note: vibrant, scintillating, bewildering, outrageous – and hitherto unheard of.«
SPIEGEL online – Most Important New Books

»Gunther Geltinger’s first novel stands out as an artfully composed, rampant and immensely brave piece of literature. (...) Leonard Engel cannot help but hurt himself and those around him, inflicting damage and dissolution on others. (...) Yet Geltinger achieves the seemingly impossible: he makes this strange Engel grow close to our heart. With him we love, suffer, and fail. And in the end, we understand how in looking at him we look into the abyss of the human soul. (...) Geltinger is a highly gifted young author, and a master of words. To Engel’s matured self he attributes a simple, prosaic, matter-of-fact language. But slipping into the role of the young Leonard Engel, his sentences grow exuberantly, meandering over the pages, bringing to mind the jagged syntax of Heinrich von Kleist, the unerring persistance of Thomas Bernhard. (...)
Despite its elaborate construction ‚Mensch Engel’ is not an artificial book. It is sensual, precise, sanguine, violent and tender, moving, enervating, and even funny. (...) Geltinger is not afraid to embrace his own pathos. He puts everything at stake – and he wins.«
Neue Zürcher Zeitung

»A great reading pleasure. Geltinger uses a clever trick to restore the delicate balance between real life and narration (...): Right from the start the gap between reality and fiction is perceptible, with the life-hungry protagonist and the narrator entering into a fierce competition, the narrator criticizing the language, the imagery, and challenging Engel’s memory, even rewriting entire passages. Geltinger carries his game with competing narrative perspectives to the extremes, lining both up to compete for their narrative authority.«
Welt am Sonntag

»Flowing from Geltinger’s pen, this eleborately constructed novel comes across as perfectly natural and manages to entagle the reader in what really is at stake here: the touching and amusing story of an extraordinary Everyman. (...) Geltinger shows exceptional talent at this early stage of his career.«
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

»Gunther Geltinger has written an amazing, elaborate, intoxicating first book. (...) It has everything you can wish for in a novel, and much more than that. Love and pain, pathos and disillusion, loneliness, heroism and longing, madness, existential confusion, simply everything. One of the most daring debuts in a long time, and written in the most sweeping language. (...) The sky is the limit for this author probing the boundaries of language as far as one can possibly go. Simply smashing!«
die tageszeitung

»MENSCH ENGEL is one of the most exceptional debuts available in a long time; a story of initiation, about a young man setting out to find love, and even more love, always trying to fill the void in his chest and driving himself to distraction in doing so. It is also a most ingeniously constructed novel, constantly challenging it’s own seeming truth.« KulturSPIEGEL

»A truly inspirational novel. Tremendously powerful in its language, brilliant in its playing with different narrative perspectives, deep in self-reflection. The best debut I’ve read in a long time.«
U_mag

»A book about the magical power of storytelling. (...) An extraordinary first novel with a complex narrative structure. Between the protagonist, Leonard Engel, and the narrator developes a tension that lasts until the final page.«
poetenladen.de

»MENSCH ENGEL is the best German debut of recent years. The powerful language of its anti-hero narrator burns right into the reader’s mind.«
Kulturnews

»A sweeping debut.«
Journal Frankfurt

»His writing is relentlessly eloquent, his sentences are impressive. Great things may be expected from Gunther Geltinger.«
Männer

»This book is pure passion: ’Mensch Engel’ follows young Leonard Engel on his wild and dramatic quest for identity and love. A convincing debut by a new literary voice.«
Westdeutscher Rundfunk

»One of the most remarkable books of the year. Geltinger challenges the reader with a complex structure of different layers and time lines. (...) Not an easy read, but highly rewarding.«
Hamburger Abendblatt Journal

»It’s not without reason that David Lynch, US film-director and master of repressed emotions is mentioned in this novel. Getting involved with Leonard Engel presents a wonderful yet straining challenge to the reader. (...) Gunther Geltinger offers different versions of the truth, or of possible truths, he lets them clash and melt into another. (...) He manages to create a book like an ocean for readers to immerse themselves in. At the same time, Geltingers novel focuses on the writing process itself, on the struggle between the narrator and his protagonist breaking free and writing down his own story.« Südwestrundfunk

»Geltinger’s debut drags you deep down into the current of the – seemingly – hopelessness of his hero. ‚Mensch Engel’ describes the great search for one’s self with the aid of literature, providing ample opportunity to dissolve the boundaries between truth and untruthfulness, between reality and delusion. And Gunther Geltinger explores these boundaries: he possesses, to speak with Musil, a strong sense of possibilities (...) A powerful writer, making the longing for love and life tangible in every line.« Frankfurter Rundschau

»’Mensch Engel’ is a story about the love of language, the healing power of literature, about life and how love is born of pain.«
Junge Welt

»A great talent.«
bücher

»In ‚Mensch Engel’, love is sought passionately, and life created by writing, with heart and soul and esprit, and the power of artistic reflection.«
literaturport.de

»An explosive new talent. If the storyline has something of the rock’n’roll swagger of Sturm und Drang, its style is pure Deutscher Expressionismus. The language is rich and rewarding to read, the constantly changing sentence construction varies the narrative’s pace, and Geltinger has a way of making familiar things sound strange. (...) ‚Mensch Engel’ is certainly a remarkable debut. It is packed with linguistic and narrative invention (...), there is potential here for a sleeper hit comparable to such other gay coming-of-age stories a Luke Sutherland’s ‚Venus a Boy’ or Hanif Kureishi’s ‚Buddha of Suburbia’.«
new books in german

»Mensch Engel is brooding, ominous and frenetic. A huge talent.«
De Morgen (Flemish quality newspaper)

About the author

Gunther Geltinger born in Erlenbach am Main in 1974, studied script-writing and drama in Vienna and at the Media Academy in Cologne. He took part in the prose authors’ workshop of the Literarische Colloquium Berlin (LCB), and was awarded the Rolf Dieter Brinkmann Stipend of the City of Cologne and the Heinrich Heine Stipend – amongst others. MENSCH ENGEL is his first novel and has been shortlisted for the aspekte prize, the most highly regarded first-writers award in Germany.