New novel by Sven Regener: Anyone who lives here will definitely develop a problem with the wall

Frank Lehmann stumbles through West Berlin again. For one day, Sven Regener sends the cult figure he invented through the city again. Just for a day? All the West Berlin affairs that the future Mr. Lehmann experienced on December 23, 1980 fill a good 270 pages. “Frankie and Freddie” is the name of the new Regener. It's as stupid as you could hope for a Lehmann novel. But it also has almost cheesy moments. Yes, yes, love! And by the way, it is something like a textbook in easy-to-read fiction, from which you can learn a lot about the walled city.

The story about the brothers Frank and Freddie Lehmann's hunt for a lost bag through the snow-covered part of town is more than just a declaration of love for the walled city, even if all the crazy characters in the novel are so lovingly described that you would like to get to know them immediately. This huge Ollie, for example, who hangs around at an Aral gas station in a jumpsuit full of shell patches and pretends to be the gas station attendant.

You would also like to have a look at the Schnaftifix drug den, where people are still drinking and fixing when the shops are already closed elsewhere in the city, even if it is described as particularly fucked up. Oh, and all the artists who only want to see the best in the Wall City and rave about the creative power of Wall City. Brother Freddie belongs to this art scene - and H.R. Single, the roommate in the Lehmann shared apartment.

This is a text from Literataz, which was published in the wochentaz on October 2nd for the Frankfurt Book Fair. The taz will be live again in Frankfurt, with readings, discussions and of course the taz stand. You can find the entire program here. All reviews from Literatz are gradually appearing online, and you can find them collected here.

He makes great art out of painting by numbers in shades of red. Then a bottle of beer in Café Einfall! Another place of longing in the Lehmann universe. Is everything great fun in this West Berlin? Exactly not. A winter smog from countless lignite tiled stoves lies over the city, where you have to pass through dark subway stations beneath East Berlin if you want to get from Kreuzberg to Schnaftifix in Wedding. Anyone who grows up like the Icke-ditte-weeßte Berliners will definitely develop a wall quirk.

Sven Regener: “Frankie and Freddie”. Galiani, Berlin 2026, 288 pages, 24 euros

And all the neurotic or would-be-neurotic elective West Berliners also become very serious on the day before Christmas. Are the brothers going home to sit under the Christmas tree with their parents in Bremen? You can't tell yourself.