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Arson: Roman
" »Ich muss zu überleben beginnen.« Nüchtern, ruhig und gefasst beobachtet die Frau, deren Stimme wir in Laura Freudenthalers Buch hören, wie die Dinge außer Kontrolle geraten. Die Dinge in ihrem Umfeld, in ihrem Leben, die Dinge, die eine globale Katastrophe ankü Überall brennen Feuer, herrscht Dürre, macht sich Hitze breit. Die Frau, die hier erzählt, registriert es mit kalter Verzweiflung und wachsender Besessenheit. Sie sucht Zuflucht, wechselt, von Träumen getrieben, ständig ihren Wohnort, tauscht die Zudringlichkeiten der Stadt gegen die Isolation am Land und entfernt sich zunehmend von der Welt, in der man bei Abendeinladungen und Festen über Beziehungen und Psychotherapien spricht. Stattdessen findet sie einen Komplizen ihrer Obsession in einem Mann, der als Experte für Wildfeuer am meteorologischen Institut arbeitet. Er leidet unter Schlaflosigkeit, weiß aber auch, dass viereinhalb Stunden Schlaf genügen, um zu überleben. Und so wacht er über den Feuerkarten, die weltweit jeden Brand verzeichnen. Als ließe sich kontrollieren, was längst außer Kontrolle geraten ist. "
239 pages, Kindle Edition
Published August 28, 2023
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
November 24, 2023
Schöne Sprache, aber teils ziemlich wirre Handlung.
(Und Sätze mit "dass" scheinen schwierig zu sein.)
(Und Sätze mit "dass" scheinen schwierig zu sein.)
July 12, 2025
Book Review: Arson by Laura Freudenthaler (Translated by Tess Lewis)
Rating: 4.5/5
Laura Freudenthaler’s Arson is a searing, poetic meditation on climate collapse that lingers like smoke long after the final page. Told through the fragmented perspectives of an anxious writer and a data-obsessed scientist, this novel doesn’t just describe environmental devastation—it embodies it, with prose that flickers between lyrical beauty and visceral panic. As wildfires rage beyond the page, I found myself equally mesmerized and unsettled by Freudenthaler’s ability to mirror our collective climate grief in the characters’ fractured psyches.
The novel’s greatest strength is its formal daring. The alternating narratives—one dreamlike and introspective, the other clinically precise—create a dissonance that perfectly captures humanity’s paralyzed response to crisis. A passage where the scientist’s wildfire statistics bleed into the narrator’s apocalyptic dreams left me breathless; it’s rare to find climate fiction that feels so psychologically true. Tess Lewis’s translation deserves special praise for preserving the German text’s haunting rhythm. That said, the novel’s deliberate fragmentation may frustrate readers craving linear storytelling—though this seems intentional, a formal rebellion against tidy narratives about an unraveling world.
By the end, Arson left me with a paradoxical ache: devastation at its bleak vision, yet weirdly comforted by its artistic courage. This isn’t a warning about the future; it’s a mirror held to our present denial.
Summary Takeaways:
-A literary inferno—Arson burns away clichés about climate fiction with prose as beautiful as it is brutal.
-If The Overstory met Annihilation in a burning forest: Freudenthaler’s novel is the haunting lovechild.
-For fans of Jenny Offill’s Weather—but with more fire, more fever, and twice the existential dread.
-The first great novel of climate grief: Arson doesn’t predict disaster—it lives it, page by scorched page.
-You’ll smell smoke after reading. A masterpiece of ecological unease, translated with crystalline precision.
Thank you to the University of Chicago Press and Edelweiss for the advance copy. Arson is essential reading in our pyrocene age—a novel that stares into the flames and finds art in the ashes.
Rating: 4.5/5
Laura Freudenthaler’s Arson is a searing, poetic meditation on climate collapse that lingers like smoke long after the final page. Told through the fragmented perspectives of an anxious writer and a data-obsessed scientist, this novel doesn’t just describe environmental devastation—it embodies it, with prose that flickers between lyrical beauty and visceral panic. As wildfires rage beyond the page, I found myself equally mesmerized and unsettled by Freudenthaler’s ability to mirror our collective climate grief in the characters’ fractured psyches.
The novel’s greatest strength is its formal daring. The alternating narratives—one dreamlike and introspective, the other clinically precise—create a dissonance that perfectly captures humanity’s paralyzed response to crisis. A passage where the scientist’s wildfire statistics bleed into the narrator’s apocalyptic dreams left me breathless; it’s rare to find climate fiction that feels so psychologically true. Tess Lewis’s translation deserves special praise for preserving the German text’s haunting rhythm. That said, the novel’s deliberate fragmentation may frustrate readers craving linear storytelling—though this seems intentional, a formal rebellion against tidy narratives about an unraveling world.
By the end, Arson left me with a paradoxical ache: devastation at its bleak vision, yet weirdly comforted by its artistic courage. This isn’t a warning about the future; it’s a mirror held to our present denial.
Summary Takeaways:
-A literary inferno—Arson burns away clichés about climate fiction with prose as beautiful as it is brutal.
-If The Overstory met Annihilation in a burning forest: Freudenthaler’s novel is the haunting lovechild.
-For fans of Jenny Offill’s Weather—but with more fire, more fever, and twice the existential dread.
-The first great novel of climate grief: Arson doesn’t predict disaster—it lives it, page by scorched page.
-You’ll smell smoke after reading. A masterpiece of ecological unease, translated with crystalline precision.
Thank you to the University of Chicago Press and Edelweiss for the advance copy. Arson is essential reading in our pyrocene age—a novel that stares into the flames and finds art in the ashes.
February 26, 2024
Die Handlung des Buches ist nicht wirklich zu beschreiben. Generell ist es sehr verwirrend und fragmentarisch
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews