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.
