Juli Zeh did not write her novel, which was published this week, after “Unterleuten” and “Über Menschen” this is called “Between Worlds”, alone.

Co-authored by Simon Urban, writer, copywriter and journalist;

"Plan D" and "How it all began and who died in the process" are the names of his best-known novels.

And even if it is not clear when reading which of the two wrote what, whether they distributed the perspectives like roles or whether they shared them, everything in the novel is laid out dualistically, in a maximally clear comparison and a kind of experimental arrangement.

Julia Enke

Responsible editor for the feuilleton of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sunday newspaper in Berlin.

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The basic assumption of "Between Worlds" is the division of society, a division not into many different conflicting attitudes and life plans, but into exactly two diametrically opposed positions.

They are embodied by two characters: Theresa Kallis, 43 years old, who took over her father's farm in Brandenburg and is now the director of Kuh & Co. Schütte e.

G. is married with two children.

And Stefan Jordan, 46 years old, relationship status unmarried, single, no children, head of culture at the major Hamburg weekly newspaper "Bote" - which in the novel alternately bears the features of "Stern" and "Zeit".

Basically, the whole book reads like an XXL "controversy" department of "Zeit", but in this reference without irony, always serious, even if the head of culture occasionally tries with somewhat laboriously humorous sayings.

He changed - she didn't

Stefan and Theresa studied German together twenty years ago and were pretty much the best of friends until Theresa dropped out to take over the farm.

Now – the novel begins on January 5, 2022 – they happened to meet again and had a terrible argument in Hamburg on a “hard-frozen meadow” on the Outer Alster, after getting drunk outside.

"Let's do it better, by email," Theresa writes to Stefan.

They begin an email and Whatsapp exchange that makes up the novel and in which Juli Zeh and Simon Urban have grazed the hard-frozen ground of all the so-called hot topics of contemporary social discourse, always with clear juxtaposition.

He changes and writes with asterisks, which she says are promoting the “polarization of society”.

Of course, he takes part in the “Young” talks on “Critical Race Theory, Intersectional Feminism, Climate Change, White Supremacy and Fighting the AfD”;

She thinks it's "all pretty silly", complains that she has to google some of his terms first, and says: "Often the much-vaunted commitment of your big-city young elite just seems to me to be a particularly lazy form of narcissism." He plans at the “Bote” an entire climate issue dedicated to activism;

she asks how the fourth estate intends to exercise control over others when they themselves have an agenda.

He implements the “Climate Edition”, which is so successful that the newspaper publisher dreams of even more activist journalism;

"Written confrontation therapy" they call their exchange, the "TS method".

Only there is nothing in the whole novel that is not already known in irreconcilable positions.

For pages on end, everything is compared here as continuous text instead of in a table, as a manifesto, expression and at the same time codification of the completely polarized society according to Zeh and Urban.

She drifts into the eco-activism of right-wing conspiracy theorists (they fill liquid manure in cans and smuggle them into the supermarkets), he takes over the editorship of the newspaper together with a black activist as a double head.

At some point the dialogue is no longer possible: "Mail delivery failed: returning message to sender".

Experiments are said to have a life of their own, and so is literature, where narrative arrangements create synergies, things spiral out of control, unforeseen events allow boundaries to be crossed.

Namely that of language, of the world of thoughts, of time.

But here everything is schema, codification and confirmation of whatever ideological formations are currently circulating.

And always with the assertion that there are only two worlds between which everything currently happens.

In fact, there are many different worlds – and this is precisely where not only the challenge lies, but also the potential of our political possibilities.

If things go better, also in literature.