Hans Boesch

Der Kiosk

«Es ist die alte Sache. Der Mensch ist unvernünftig. Weshalb nur hat Adrien das in seinen Plänen übersehen können?»

With «The Kiosk», writer and transport planner Hans Boesch (1926-2003) presents a superb mirror of the 1970s in the form of a comprehensive, 400-page strong utopian novel, to which we owe one of the most beautiful and erotic love scenes of modern German-language literature. In a well-conceived construction made up of four parts, each attributed to one of the seasons, «The Kiosk» contains the notations of the silent observer Boos, who is wheelchair-bound as he is missing both legs due to an accident.
Boos works as a vendor at a kiosk in a large building, which is a microcosm of university, hospital, laboratory, welfare centre and morgue all rolled into one. Time and again he is harassed by fascistic youths who, at the end of the novel, torch the kiosk where Boos is fast asleep. While Boos’ notes, found by an editor, are charred, they are complete and fully legible. These recordings reflect three time levels: the present-day plot comprises descriptions of the persons and events in and around the building complex. Especially three further male characters are of importance: Mac, an English fighter pilot, who was shot down in the Second World War and is confined to a corset; scientist Adrien with his wooden leg; and finally the down-to-earth character of janitor Hanselmann. Narrator Boos artfully intersperses the present with flashbacks into his past, which notably tells the tragic love story of Boos and Eva, the unhappily married wife of a customs official.

Apart from present and past, the novel includes a futuristic perspective, which is why it can be ascribed to the genre of science fiction. This time level centres on the grotesque idea of a world rid of all humans and their banishment to an underwater city. The project, developed by scientist Adrien, who calls it «The Conservation Campaign», is made up of the three sub-projects «The Cleansing of the World» – «a mucking out, so to speak, of all that afflicts the world», meaning people – «Underwater City», in which the all those men and women considered worthy live in small berths without any interaction – and «The Supreme Show», the programming of a virtual pseudo-reality to entertain the inhabitants of the underwater world in their solitary cells.

(Rudolf Probst, trans. by Simon Froehling)

Translation of title: The Kiosk

Artemis, Zürich 1978

ISBN: 978-3-0340-0836-5