Hanna Heim: "Hofsommer" und Daniel Haas: "Einsamsein"

In their books, Daniel Haas and Hanna Heim explore the major themes of loneliness and suicide from different perspectives. How does one find a way out of a feeling of profound loneliness after both parents have taken their own lives?

And how should one respond when one’s own grandparents decide to take their own lives in order to die on their own terms—voluntarily and together?

While Daniel Haas embarks on a personal and poetic quest to uncover the origins of loneliness and find ways to cope with it, Hanna Heim has her protagonist, Doreen, explore the question of what truly matters in life—which places, people, and experiences.

Daniel Haas, born in 1967, lives in Hamburg as a freelance journalist and author. From 2004 to 2010, he was culture editor at SPIEGEL ONLINE, followed by stints at the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Die Zeit, and the Neue Zürcher Zeitung. He writes about literature, film, and sociopolitical issues. The topic of loneliness has long been a focus of his work. He lost both parents to suicide, and a bout of burnout left him isolated for several years. Thus, loneliness became a formative experience—and an opportunity to better understand himself and others.

Hanna Heim, born in 1988, is from East Berlin and works as a business journalist. She lives near Berlin with her husband and two daughters. After the deaths of both her grandparents, she decided to turn her family history into a novel.

Moderator:Julia Maronde