A hidden love story and the beginnings of writing.
Invited to a reading from his unfinished manuscript, the narrator travels to Mecklenburg in June 2025. This lake-rich landscape is the very place he called "the North" in the summer of 1979, the period his text is about. An unexpected encounter seems to bring his novella to life, raising the question of what was and what really is. Was he too young and too carefree for true love back then, and is it too late now? Have only illusions and utopias been lost, or also the aspirations and hopes that are missing from a present in which the old fear of war seems real once more? Perhaps the love story in Water in August is also a school of seeing, of recognising and of writing, and an attempt to come to terms with the world, with people and with one’s own history as accurately and vividly as possible.
"a literary event" - Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Andreas Platthaus
"[...] Ingo Schulze [is] a witty storyteller who knows how to transform the metapoetic matryoshka into a living text of flesh and blood." – Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Daniela Strigl
"Ingo Schulze paints a very fine portrait of a writer who questions himself as a seeker, struggling for answers." – NDR, Terry Albrecht
"Cleverly, Water in August plays with the perspectives between yesterday and today, entertainingly and elegantly probing the possibilities of literature." – MDR, Bettina Baltschev
"[...] a multifaceted book; it plays with the seriousness of art and the lightness of life in youth." / "[Schulze leads us] with ease into complex entanglements—literary, human, and political alike." – Frankfurter Rundschau, Judith von Sternburg
"[...] one of the finest books of the year." – stern plus, Oliver Creutz
"A beguiling story about coming of age, the end of innocence, the loss of ideals, and how memories often diverge when two people look back on the exact same experience." / "One really cannot put down this atmospherically rich novel, which offers plenty of food for thought and keeps surprising us with new plot twists." – Freie Presse / Märkische Allgemeine, Welf Grombacher
"[Schulze plays] cleverly with reality and truthfulness." – Sächsische Zeitung, Karin Großmann
