Botanik des Wahnsinns

When the forced eviction of his mother's apartment leads to a mix-up that sends everything of value to the incinerator, the narrator is left with nothing but the refuse of his own family history. How did it come to this? The narrator reflects on his family's biography: a family tree of madness. The grandmother is bipolar, with twelve suicide attempts; the grandfather a regular at Steinhof; the mother an alcoholic; the father depressed. He also looks at his own path: a childhood in a working-class neighborhood in Munich, an early fear of going insane, fleeing the family to distant New York, years in Vienna with Freud in the café, and how he ultimately ends up in the institution – as a psychologist. In working with patients, he learns that a person is always more than their illness, that listening is more important than diagnosing. Above all, he soon has to confront the question of what it means to be a normal person.

Is this a runaway family history? A rogue novel? A lesson in empathy? Leon Engler's debut is all of this and more, a tender act of liberation, the story of reconciliation.

Favorite book of the Swiss book trade 2026.

Nominated for the ZDF "aspekte" Literature Prize 2025.

“A fantastic book – profoundly deep yet comforting. I devoured it.” – Doris Dörrie

“Unmissable. Light-footed and serious, tender and brutal, ironic and honest.” – Siri Hustvedt.