Lou Zipsky sits, enshrouded in a pink cloud, on the 121st floor of »Beachlandias« narratological faculty, an enigmatic tower of ancient pale pink stone. He is trapped in an endless 78th hour and must recount and write down what happened in the previous 77 hours, before the cloud will release him. With everything at his disposal—including 13 typewriters of questionable origin—Lou, as narrator, penetrates this 78th hour and soon realizes that he is developing an »almost manic relationship with writing tools«.
77 hours earlier, Lou Zipsky arrives by sea in »Beachlandia«, the eternal land of rays. After three years in his aunt's hotel, he returns to the university to replace a former student and now doctoral candidate named Hitori at short notice, who disappeared in the corridors almost two weeks ago while fetching photocopying paper. Lou, who actually wanted to write a gigantomaniac novel, now intends to become a functionary in the narratological faculty in order to make up for the sobering events of the past few years.
Lou soon realizes that he is no longer up to the demands of academic work and escapes into all kinds of rampant conversations with his old friends at the university. An uncontrollable curiosity, but at times also completely different motives, drive Lou and his circle of friends to make forays through the nine basement floors of the faculty and subsequently also up into its Babylonian-looking tower—a tower whose true height is obscured by the ominous pink cloud which, according to all the rumors, originates from strange machines. Further confusion is caused by a 13-year-old boy called Tom Ghostly, who wanders through all the floors in ghostly galoshes and seems to be everywhere at once.
Following a “poetics of consecutive hours”, »Beachlandia« is a novel that tells the longings and secrets between 13 protagonists, all of whom are connected to the faculty of narratology, in 78 consecutive hours. Following no less a “poetics of failure”, Lou Zipsky and the novel repeatedly draw parallels to other representatives of this writing tradition, including Franz Kafka as well as Donna Tartt, Marianne Fritz, Thomas Pynchon, Arno Schmidt, Robert Musil, William Gaddis and David Foster Wallace.
»Beachlandia« is a geometricized novel with a penchant for experimentation that blends characteristics of both the high novel and popular genres on more than 850 pages. With its publication coming closer and closer, »Beachlandia« will finally be the first installment in a multi-volume series that has been in the making and growing since 2011.
[Please note that »Beachlandia« is written and going to be published in German, with the goal being to translate it into English as quick as possible.]
