Abstract
Berlin-based novelist, poet, librettist, and essayist Hans-Ulrich Treichel emerged as a leading German writer in the 1990s. He remains best known for his novel Der Verlorene [Lost, 1998] which deals with the long-suppressed problem of German loss and suffering after World War II. Before the 1990s, German literature seldom explored the lasting effects of grief, loss, and displacement in Germany. Treichel was one of the first to find his way imaginatively into this theme and also to reach a wider audience. As a poet and fiction writer, Treichel is distinctive for the light touch of his wry humor as a way of illuminating dark and forbidding topics, mostly via hapless male protagonists who take …