Gert Loschütz

The story of the paradoxical relationship of two parents. As he clears out his parents’ house, Philipp, a photographer, comes across an object that has played a major role in his parents’ lives. Herta and Georg made a fine couple when they first met. Their son imagines the early days of their relationship and remembers how his father was forced to flee across the inner-German border to the West. When Herta and Philipp joined him a few days later, this could have signaled the start of a new era of happiness, but the seeds of their separation had already been sown. In gentle, probing prose, Gert Loschütz describes how Philipp gradually unravels the paradoxical nature of his parents’ relationship: it was love that destroyed their love. To his astonishment, Philipp discovers that Herta and Georg had been in contact all those years in a way they kept secret even from one another.

Im Dezember 1939 kommt es vor dem Bahnhof von Genthin zum schwersten Zugunglück, das sich jemals auf deutschem Boden ereignet hat. Zwei Züge prallen aufeinander, zahlreiche Menschen sterben. In einem davon sitzt Carla, die schwer verletzt überlebt. Verlobt ist sie mit Richard, einem Juden aus Neuss, aber nicht er ist ihr Begleiter, sondern der Italiener Giuseppe Buonomo, der durch den Aufprall ums Leben kommt. Das Ladenmädchen Lisa vom Kaufhaus Magnus erhält den Auftrag, der Verletzten, die bei dem Unglück alles verloren hat, Kleidung zu bringen. Aber da gibt Carla sich bereits als Frau Buonomo aus. Was versucht sie zu verbergen? Von diesem mysteriösen Vorfall erfährt viele Jahre später Lisas Sohn Thomas Vandersee, dem die Mutter zugleich ihre eigene Liebes- und Unglücksgeschichte erzählt. Kann er Carlas Geheimnis ergründen? Hängt es womöglich mit seiner eigenen Familie zusammen? Vor dem Hintergrund einer historischen Katastrophe erzählt der Romancier Gert Loschütz eine große, unter die Haut gehende Geschichte von Liebe und Verrat.

Over ten rainy nights, Thomas, an ex-bargeman who used to be skipper of his own boat, walks the muddy fields of the landlocked German interior and remembers the events that lost him his home, his boat, and his livelihood: his apprenticeship in the cold halls of the Royal Naval College in London; the dangers of the mean streets and waterfront of New York in the 1970s, and Poland under martial law; Germany after the reunification, when for a year or so it seemed that the whole country drifted rudderless, drawn by the current of history to who knows where. Thomas remembers childhood, his first love, and the warnings of his grandfather: Beware the dark company! This mysterious band of men and women dressed in black cast a shadow over his story, as he wrestles with the secrets, the unplumbed depths of his soul, the hazards lurking below a seemingly placid surface, and throughout it all, the rain, falling night after night. Dark Company is a superb example of a distinctly German tradition in weird fiction which claims its roots in Kafka and Herbert Rosendorfer.

"Of course I had to end up here..." Over ten rainy nights, Thomas, an ex-barge-man who used to be skipper of his own boat, walks the muddy fields of the land-locked German interior and remembers the events that lost him his home, his boat, and his livelihood: his apprenticeship in the cold halls of the Royal Naval College in London; the dangers of the mean streets and waterfront of New York in the 1970s and Poland under martial law; and Germany after the reunification, when for a year or so it seemed that the whole country drifted rudderless, drawn by the current of history to who knows where. In this novel from Gert Loschutz, Thomas remembers childhood, his first love, and the warning of his grandfather: Beware the dark company! This mysterious band of men and women dressed in black cast a shadow over his story, as he wrestles with secrets, the unplumbed depths of his soul, the hazards lurking below a seemingly placid surface, and throughout it all, the rain, falling night after night. "Dark Company" is a superb example of a distinctly German tradition in weird fiction that has its roots in Kafka and Herbert Rosendorfer.