Die Welt im Rücken : Haus zur Sonne

In *Die Welt im Rücken* and *Haus zur Sonne*, the Kleist Prize winner offers a relentless account of his bipolar disorder, which becomes a compelling psychological portrait of our unsettling present. At the heart of it all is a disembodied, smooth society that no longer feels itself and has lost all connection to itself and the rest of the world. What initially sounds dystopian unfolds into a grand, linguistically powerful narrative about people’s dreams.

The writer Thomas Melle, born in 1975, studied Comparative Literature and Philosophy in Tübingen, Austin (Texas) and Berlin. He is the author of widely performed plays and has translated, amongst others, William T. Vollmann and Quentin Tarantino into German. His debut novel *Sickster* (2011) was shortlisted for the German Book Prize and was awarded the Franz Hessel Prize. This was followed in 2014 by the novel *3000 Euro*, in 2016 by *Die Welt im Rücken* and in 2025 by *Haus zur Sonne*. All three novels were shortlisted for the German Book Prize.

In 2026, he was awarded the prestigious Kleist Prize. The director Claudia Bossard, who most recently staged Schiller’s *Die Räuber* and Rainald Goetz’s *Baracke* at the DT, has had an artistic collaboration with Thomas Melle for many years. In 2018, she directed the Austrian premiere of his play *Bilder von uns* at the Schauspielhaus Graz. Now, for the first time, both parts of the novel are being adapted as a single narrative for the theatre stage. When Bossard meets Melle, punk and language, the world and art are likely to coalesce into an iridescent diagnosis of the present.