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The eldest son is a cancelled literature professor who sees a saviour in Trump; the daughter has opened a queer bookshop in Berlin; the youngest son will do anything to avoid being associated with the fortune of his Elon Musk-like father-in-law; the mother, an expert on the work of Thomas Mann, is stuck in a stalled academic career; and the father would rather not talk about the past. Meet the Schönwald family, the protagonists of an ambitious debut novel that has been compared to Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections and Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks.
they/them
The opening of THEY/THEM, the queer bookshop run by the daughter Karolin, brings the whole Schönwald family together again. Even the eldest son Chris has come from New York, where he was working for Donald Trump’s campaign after his dismissal as a literature professor at Columbia University. Unfortunately, the opening of the shop also attracts the attention of left-wing activists, who claim that the Schönwald family wealth comes from the grandfather’s Nazi past.
major clean-up
These events and their aftermath force all family members to face each other and their past, and to relive the traumatic events that the father, Harry, would rather not talk about, but which the mother, Ruth, is only too happy to bring up. Slowly but surely, the crisis that had been brewing for years within the Schönwald family is finally coming to a head.
morality sketch
Schönwald was the book that Annelies Beck gave most frequently as a gift in 2024. She is therefore the ideal person to talk to the author about cancel culture, Trump, the illusion of the family, generational conflict, fake news, wokeness, neglect, violence and all the other contemporary topics that are dissected in this superior morality sketch.
about the author
Philipp Oehmke (b. 1974) grew up in Bonn and studied journalism at Columbia University. After four years working for the magazine of the renowned Süddeutsche Zeitung, he switched to Der Spiegel. In 2015 he moved to New York, returning to Berlin in 2020. Oehmke is widely regarded as one of the best journalists of his generation. His biography of the German punk band Die Toten Hosen spent several weeks on the bestseller list, as did his debut novel Schönwald. Oehmke is currently working on a sequel to Schönwald.
about the interviewer
Annelies Beck (b. 1973) is a writer and journalist who anchors the current affairs programme Terzake. She has also written two novels: Over het kanaal (2011), a historical novel set during World War I, and Toekomstkoorts (2019), about a Belgian attempt to colonize Brazil.
Organisation: Passa Porta
picture: Philipp Oehmke © Karina Rozwadowska, Annelies Beck © Eveline Renaud
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