The Hothouse

The Hothouse traces the tragic final two days in the life of a minor German politician, Keetenheuve, a man disillusioned by the corruption of his country after the Second World War. Following his self-imposed exile during the war, Keetenheuve returns to the hothouse: the city of Bonn, the capital of that new postwar capitalist nation, West Germany. Until this point he has led a life guided by principle and political optimism. Here, in spellbinding internal monologue and jarring montage, he meets his end. The Hothouse is an existential masterpiece and a portrait of a moral man crushed by an immoral world. Bitterly controversial at home, a cult writer abroad, Koeppen (1906-1996) brought a volcanic modernist style to German literature that remains unparalleled to this day. His uniquely radical voice and breathtaking prose is rendered magnificently by Michael Hofmann.

Wolfgang Koeppen (1906-1996) was born in Greifswald and died in Munich. He worked as a junior chef, a dramaturge, and an editor. In 1951, 1953 and 1954 three novels were published to high acclaim for accurately capturing the atmosphere of the republic under Konrad Adenauer: Pigeons on the Grass, The Hothouse, and Death in Rome.