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Why tell stories? Thomas Hettche's essays are as precise diagnoses of our crisis-ridden, disenchanted modernity as they are bold assessments of his own consciousness and thinking. One question drives this author's writing: What comfort can literature still offer our empty hearts today? "Our Empty Hearts" continues Thomas Hettche's essayistic-narrative explorations following "Logbook" and "Totenberg," through which he, alongside his highly acclaimed novels, continues to write his intellectual autobiography. Without cultural pessimism, but with the awareness that metaphysical questions of meaning are becoming increasingly urgent in our fundamentally threatened Western societies, Thomas Hettche passionately interrogates literature in his essays about its meaning and future. This stands in contrast to the naive belief in the world's representability that dominates our present.