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Herbert Rosendorfer

Kadon, ehemaliger Gott (The Man Who Was God)

Verlag Kiepenheuer & Witsch, February 2001, 128 pp.
ISBN 3-462-02971-1

The ravings of a lunatic Robinson Crusoe? A leaf or two out of the adventures of Baron von Munchhausen? This extraordinary novel, with its blend of erudition (both real and mock), whimsy, wordplay and surreal inventiveness, is both of these things and more. Ebullience, extravagance and high spirits are among its hallmarks. Yet, like the same author's previous works, it leaves the reader with a dark sense of unease.

It is the lament of the one-time, or part-time, god Kadon, humanly speaking the sole remaining survivor of the wrecked ship MS Gefion when she is dashed against the jutting side of an island of the same name, an island where 'the sun never rises' and which is so far south that 'South is North and North is South'. Only eighteen out of 800 passengers and crew have managed to scramble ashore and all except Kadon soon perish in different ways, some violent, some extraordinary, and almost all comical. First to go are all the female survivors, persuaded by one of their number to take shelter in the lee of a spoon-shaped rock and soon sucked out. Kadon remembers watching the only pretty one flash past, her clothes ripped off by the wind, and displaying 'the most glorious female rear-end I have ever seen'.

Soon the remaining survivors (some have already fallen off the edge of a cliff) discover that the island is edible. Cue for eating their way into the interior, at the expense of their waistlines, until one of them simply crumbles to pieces and is shovelled into the lake. At last Kadon alone is left. He calculates the days by counting the hairs of his beard, ruminates on nothingness and what existed before the Big Bang, on God and even Jesus. And all this while dictating into his computer.

Kadon would present a real challenge to the translator, both in the mattter of language and German references. But by god (may one say?) it would be worth it.


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