»Diagonally behind them stands the sun, its fingers work their way across the street as if it were a keyboard, and time and again one of the fingers jumps along beside as a bright patch, slides, skids: over the stones, away. Then Hilde would like to be the light

– From Lichtpause
lichtpause_400

Novel,
Volk & Welt Publishers, Berlin 1998

Published on 28.07.1998
ISBN: 978-3353011350
Only available second-hand
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Lichtpause

In the eyes of the eleven-year-old girl with the thick glasses, things have a face all of their own. A round pond is, in fact, not round, and there’s no way that the round trees on her father’s architectural drawings are round. Colours, shapes and smells, the meaning of words, the puzzle of existence – little Hilde perceives them all a little differently from the adults. Hilde has thoughts about thinking, discovers the deceit in concepts and gets on adults’ nerves with nosy questions: Why it is, given that the navel is a sign of having been born, that Adam and Eve have a navel on all the pictures that are shown to her to convince her of the existence of God? Hilde knows wonderfully how to wonder, till there is a moment in her life where time goes on and stands still simultaneously. The answer to the question what makes light’s travel stop becomes of vital importance: Hilde has been found seriously wounded on the asphalt in front of her home. The female emergency doctor, attending to her, and the police are just as lost for an explanation about what has happened as her parents.