Faserland Book Summary and Study Guide

This is a post modernist German novel about the decay of society in the 1990s. In this book the main character, an unnamed young man from a wealthy family goes on a trip through Germany and down to Switzerland. On the way he falls in and out of contact with several people, some new, some old friends. He ends up at several parties full of sex and drugs where everything is one messy blur. Sometimes he goes out with one group of people, only to find himself surrounded by only strangers later. No one in his life is reliable. At one of these parties another man attempts to seduce him. At another he finds a friend doing Heroin in the basement. The main character seems to drift through life and through space, travelling along through a maze of debauchery, and hopelessness. Along the way he remembers pieces of his childhood, such as playing in abandoned WWII tanks in the forest as a child and going on beach trips with his parents. On one occasion he reflects on a time when he was a teenager, visiting the house of a girl he was in love with and while taking a nap, vomited and shit himself in his sleep. Horrified he runs out of the house and never goes back. Towards the end of the novel he finds himself at a party at a lake house in the south where drugs and alcohol abound. A old friend of his is there, clearly addicted to valium so that he is always numb. This friend ends up walking out into the water and drowning during the night. The main character then moves on to Switzerland where he rows out into the middle of a lake and disappears into the fog, potentially committing suicide, however the ending is left open for interpretation.
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