Lesung und Gespräch: Jochen Schmidt: "Hoplopoiia“

As everything changes far too quickly, Richard Sparka can only look back on events with a mixture of astonishment and resignation. His relationship with Klara is over; the children are growing up, and his parents are getting old. Even life in the city where he was born—and which has always been his home—seems increasingly unbearable to him. The newspaper stand at his favorite late-night convenience store had to make way for a shelf of potato chips—nothing short of a catastrophe for Richard. And Richard is convinced that the trendy new ice cream shop around the corner will transform his neighborhood until rents become unaffordable. How do others manage to keep their heads above water in the face of these drastic changes? Richard sets out to search for clues in his childhood in the GDR. Does his inability to cope with life have anything to do with growing up in a dictatorship?  Would his outlook on the future be more optimistic if he’d seized the chance back then to become a mathematician? 
Richard Sparka is the urban neurotic of the 21st century! In “Hoplopoiia,” Jochen Schmidt paints a pointed portrait of society that reveals the overwhelming demands and isolation faced by people in our fast-paced present, all while repeatedly turning his mercilessly comic gaze toward his hapless hero, Sparka.

Jochen Schmidt was born in Berlin in 1970 and lives there. In 2023, he received the Literature Prize from the Stahlstiftung Eisenhüttenstadt, and in 2026, the Joseph Breitbach Prize.

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