Das Teemännchen

Heinz Strunk's stories. Long, short, very short. Some of them connect to well-known Strunkian themes: loneliness, sexual desperation, bodily decay, alcohol, obesity. However, they are written differently than Strunk's previous books: always pointed, but often not funny, sometimes bizarre, dreamlike, dark, grotesque. For example, there is the story of the East German citizen who is so broken by political persecution that he misinterprets the reunification as a perfidious subversion maneuver by the regime and never leaves his gray zone apartment again. In other pieces, small cars conspire to revolt against humans, Axl Rose from Guns N' Roses experiences his hellish journey in Hamburg's red-light district, a beauty queen transforms into an old hag through work at a fast-food joint, and a man is crucified on a wind turbine by the highway, while a Wilhelm Busch expert gets caught up in it all.