Schattenfroh by Michael Lentz (Pub. 2018) 1/2

Schattenfroh by Michael Lentz is a mammoth experimental German novel, originally published in 2018 and translated into English by Max Lawton in 2025 by Deep Vellum. The title is a German neologism combining “shadow” and “joy.” This meet up will be split into two sessions to accommodate the size of the novel.

The narrator, called “Nobody” (Niemand), is held captive in a dark room in complete isolation, wearing a face mask equipped with technology that harnesses his thought processes into what he calls “brainwater script”

His jailor, named Schattenfroh—who is by turns God, the Devil, and Nobody’s already dead father—leads the mysterious Frightbearing Society, which hopes the encyclopedic book Nobody writes will serve as the society’s foundational, quasi-religious text.

Nobody’s mission is to “write everything down from the beginning,” following the historical arc of the city of Düren from 748 to 2018—from its first documented reference to its complete destruction in 1944 during an Allied bombing that killed 3,127 people.