Hans Christoph Buch

Guest of the ilb 2003, 2008

Hans Christoph Buch was born in Wetzlar, in 1944. The son of a diplomat, he grew up in Wiesbaden, Marseilles and Copenhagen. After giving a reading to Group 47 when he was nineteen, he was given a grant to attend the Literary Colloquium in Berlin. He studied German language and literature and Slavonic at the Free and Technical Universities and in 1972 received his PhD, on »Descriptive Literature and its Critics« supervised by Walter Höllerer. He went on to work as a reader for the publisher Rowohlt and became co-founder and editor of their magazine »Literaturmagazin«. Buch taught at the Universities of Bremen and Essen in the seventies, and was a guest professor in California, New York and Texas. He traveled to West Africa and South America to give lectures and readings. Further travels took him to , and .

In his life and work as novelist, essayist and reporter, Buch fuses literature and politics. Short story collections (1966) and literary essays (1972) were followed by the first novel, »Die Hochzeit von Port-au-Prince« (1984; »The Wedding at Port-au-Prince«, 1986), the first volume of his »Haiti Trilogy«. Here, first-hand, detailed descriptions and references to literary and cultural history complement one another. The biographies of Buch’s grandfather, who migrated to and married a native, and other migrants present a full portrait of a Caribbean island afflicted by violence and dictatorship.

In the nineteen nineties Buch worked as a war correspondent, mainly in Africa. Collections of his reportages, on certain hotspots and war zones, as well as travelogues reveal Buch to be a sharp and harsh observer who chooses to highlight ambivalences and grievances rather than participate in the »social romantic glorification of the Third World«, as he put it in his novel »Kain und Abel in Afrika« (2001; t: Cain and Abel in Africa).

In his novel »Tod in Habana« (2007; t: Death in Havana) the downfall of the death-driven protagonist is an allusion to Thomas Mann’s »Death in Venice« and an analogy for the city’s physical and moral decline and the country’s disastrous political situation. Most recently, with »Das rollende R der Revolution« (2008; t: The rolling R of revolution), the author gives us a glimpse, at once subjective and sophisticated, into the social and political structures of certain Latin American countries.

Buch also works as editor, translator and presenter of literary and political discussions, and is active in the press as a versatile commentator on current affairs. In 2008 he published an open letter to the President of Germany, Horst Köhler, drawing attention to the blatant crimes committed by the military ruler of Rwanda, Paul Kagame. The author is an Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. In 2004 he was awarded the Prize of the Frankfurt Anthology. He lives in Berlin and near Gorleben in the Lüchow-Dannenberg district.

© international literature festival berlin

Hans Christoph Buch online: www.hans-christoph-buch.de