»Because it had turned out that way, Leidegger had been having an affair for several months.« Bernhard Strobel’s second novel about a man in crisis begins so succinctly. Remorse is gnawing at him because he is cheating on wife Martina with his childhood sweetheart Kamilla. As an »affair operator« he gets in his own way, and as a self-employed photographer he is treading water.
Male stereotypes are actually deeply repugnant to Leidegger, and yet clichés keep being imposed on him, which he would prefer to tear off immediately.
Bernhard Strobel makes fun of toxic masculinity in such a wonderfully funny way and cleverly spells out how a man gets himself further and further into trouble.
»In his new novel, Bernhard Strobel approaches the subject of masculinity in an unusually humorous way. A book about a small drama with great entertainment value.« (Florian Kölsch, ORF)
»Bernhard Strobel succeeds in something extremely artistic: he manages to keep you as a reader spellbound for 200 pages with this not-too-sympathetic brooding world champion, to latch onto his simple to obscure trains of thought and, in the end, to somehow look at your own failure at absurd everyday life a little more closely and mildly.« (Ulrich Rüdenauer, WDR)
»Strobel is unquestionably one of the most interesting voices of the young generation. Like only a few, he is able to put himself in the heads of his characters.« (Markus Bundi, Wiener Zeitung)