Over a period of five years and for various internet platforms, Sven Regener, musician and man of letters
(or the other way round), singer with the band Element of Crime and creator of the Berlin Blues trilogy, produced the most densely dialogued, wittiest logbooks ever to be written on journeys through the stormy seas and stagnant waters of life. We learn how he stumbles around Frankfurt Book Fair while in search of the “Arno Schmidt Society”, that he has an attack of paranoia during an Element of Crime tour, photographs the Batman Building in Nashville, Tennessee, from the wrong side, reconciles Austria and Germany, and broadcasts bus driver Udo’s opinion about the makers of Wuppertal’s suspended railway (“a botch job from Bavaria”).
And then there’s Hamburg Heiner, friend, foe, critic and taskmaster who calls Regener almost daily to update him on his deliberations – for example, about the dispute over the correct notation of “Oh Christmas Tree” or the significance of Austrian rule over Hamburg-Altona between 1864–1866.
If you read all the logbooks in one go, you realize something very unique has been created. This is a
combination of journal and novel, a sailor’s yarn in the tradition of the great raconteurs and ranters,
windbags and goofballs, or as Hamburg Heiner would put it: "If it has to be a century, then let’s make it the 18th!”
«‘My Years with Hamburg-Heiner’ is a brilliant hybrid between novel and diary – and the funniest book of this spring.» (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung)
