Lukas Rietzschel researched for "Sanditz" in Ukraine

The Görlitz-based author Lukas Rietzschel also conducted research on location in Ukraine for his new novel "Sanditz". He traveled via Poland and then onwards by night train across the border. "And suddenly you're in a country at war," said Rietzschel at a reading in Dresden. He experienced a "swath of devastation" and a long queue of women and children waiting to leave the country at the border. "That still shook me up to this day," said Rietzschel. He himself, on the other hand, was able to enter and leave the country effortlessly as an EU citizen - and experienced this as a great privilege.

In his third novel, Rietzschel sheds light on the history of the Wenzel family from the late 1970s to the coronavirus pandemic and the beginning of the war in Ukraine as a kind of East German family and social chronicle. One of the characters - ex-policeman Tom - travels to Ukraine as a volunteer to support the armed forces there.

"A place as I would like it to be"

Sanditz - the title of the novel - is a fictional small town in Lusatia near a lignite mining area, on the "breaking point of open-cast mining", as Rietzschel describes it. According to Rietzschel, this town contains a little of Kamenz, but also of Görlitz, Zittau and Weißwasser with its glass industry. "I simply build a place as I would like it to be."

The novel is characterized by numerous characters and jumps in time. Rietzschel has pinned many thumbtacks, red cords and sticky notes to the wall so as not to lose track. Similar to how one imagines the work of the criminal investigation department, according to the author. "The woodchip wallpaper was full."

Rietzschel as an important voice of the East

Rietzschel was born in Räckelwitz in 1994 and grew up in Kamenz. He studied political science, German studies and cultural management in Kassel and Zittau/Görlitz. Rietzschel's first novel "Mit der Faust in die Welt schlagen", in which he tells a family story of those who lost out at the fall of communism and right-wing radicals, attracted attention in 2018. The novel was made into a movie.

In 2022, the author was awarded the Saxon Literature Prize 2022 - as "an unmistakable, important voice from the East", which makes people aware of the long-term consequences of far-reaching change, not only in Eastern Germany and not only in rural regions.