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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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