So Much Time
So viel Zeit

goosen frank so viel zeit
Eichborn
July 2007 / 350pp
Fiction

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review

Friendship, music and nostalgia for the early 1980s are the heart of this novel, with echoes of Nick Hornby and Tony Parsons (including the epigraph). Its plot-line is the attempt of five forty-something men to form a rock band to play at their twenty-fiveyear school reunion, their relationship to each other, their love affairs, hang-ups, crises and – in one case – tragedy. Their band, Mountain of Thunder, covers a variety of rock songs of the time. Led Zeppelin, Metallica, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath – here they all are again, and in the end the performance, and the warm-up gigs that precede it, have a therapeutic influence on them all. Their fantasies may be of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll, but their lives, in fact, are more familiarly humdrum. A highly enjoyable, character-driven read. Wonderful, the power of music!

about the author

Frank Goosen was born in 1966, and lives with his wife and children in Bochum. He made his name with the novels Liegen Lernen and Pokorny Lacht and his most recent books are Mein Ich und Mein Leben (2004) and Pink Moon (2005) all published with Eichborn. A movie is due to be based on ‘So Much Time’, which is already a bestseller in Germany.

Translated editions of his work published by:
Denmark (Forlaget Systime); Israel (Keren Publishing)

rights information

Eichborn AG 
Kaiserstr. 66 
D – 60329 Frankfurt am Main, Germany 
Tel: +49 69 25 60 03 767 
Email: rights@eichborn.de 
Contact: Jutta Willand

Eichborn AG was founded in 1980, and is one of the few independent general publishers operating in Germany. Its strong and diversified list includes fiction and non-fiction, humour and reference books. It has two subsidiary lists: Die Andere Bibliothek (‘The Other Library’), founded by Hans Magnus Enzensberger, and Eichborn Berlin, which focuses on literary debuts in German. Many titles originally published by Eichborn have been translated into English, including W.G. Sebald’s The Emigrants and The Rings of Saturn; A Woman in Berlin by Anonymous (winner of the 2006 Schlegel-Tieck award); Karen Duve’s Rain; Walter Moers’ The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear and Jan Costin Wagner’s Icemoon

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All recommendations from Autumn 2007