Tellkamp, Uwe 1968–

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Tellkamp, Uwe 1968–

PERSONAL:

Born 1968.

ADDRESSES:

E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Writer.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Dresden Poetry Prize, 2004; Ingeborg Bachmann Prize, 2004, for work in progress.

WRITINGS:

NOVELS

Der Hecht, Die Träume Und Das Portugiesische Cafe, Faber & Faber (Leipzig, Germany), 2000.

Der Eisvogel (title means "The Icebird"), Rowohlt Berlin (Berlin, Germany), 2005.

SIDELIGHTS:

Uwe Tellkamp was the winner of the prestigious Dresden Poetry Prize in 2004, in a competition open to German and Czech-speaking authors. That same year, he was awarded the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize in an annual competition that involves writers reading unpublished manuscripts and then taking criticism from a panel of judges, with the proceedings being broadcast on national television. Tellkamp's winning work used the framework of a trolley ride around Dresden to support his thematic and linguistic flights.

Tellkamp's novel, Der Eisvogel, is, in the words of World Literature Today reviewer Gregory H. Wolf, "an intriguing, complexly written novel with a number of interwoven themes such as social criticism, a father-son conflict, and, most notably, terrorism." The reviewer compared Tellkamp's novel to a "mosaic," as it is made up of shifting viewpoints and perspectives, moving back and forth in time after it begins at the protagonist's trial for a shooting. The man, named Wiggo, is thirty years old. Despite being the son of a successful banker and having earned his Ph.D., he is unemployed and adrift in life. Injured in a terrorist attack, Wiggo begins to tell his life story, with many interruptions from other narrators. Wolf felt that Der Eisvogel is "an engaging read," and that the references to terrorism and contemporary social and political issues, along with the author's "elevated linguistic register and narrative style, invite readers to contemplate and reflect on violent extremism, the use of power and terrorism, and the future of legitimate political representation."