Аз

Peter Flam is the creative pseudonym of the German writer and psychiatrist Erich Mosse (1891-1963). Recently rediscovered, his main novel “AZ?”, published in 1926 and called by the criticism of the time “a paper volcano of passions and sufferings”, returns to readers not only as a classic example of expressionism in literature. Its piercing intonation resonates, alas, even today with the incessant upheavals in all corners of the world.

This is the story of a man who survived the battlefield but lost himself in a war that continues to haunt him and whose end does not mean the end of destruction. The survivor returned dead. Two men seem to be talking over him. “Who am I really, who am I?” The whole novel is a cry of his split, mutilated soul, of its pain and confusion. A stream of consciousness as the man struggles with his ghosts, a monologue in the present tense like a fantastic stormy river: .... here the world burned, here millions were charred and bled, here lie our brothers, here lies Europe, here lies humanity, here I am too, here I lie, here my life lies, here there are graves, graves, graves...”