"To the Elephants" by Peter Karoshi: "So did I want to stop time back then, just a few days ago in reality?" About a father-son adventure, memories and the journey to oneself

"I am Theo, and everything that has come, I have simply always accepted."
These are the words that begin the 2021 novella "Zu den Elefanten" (To the Elephants) by Vienna-based historian Peter Karoshi. It is the first work he has published in twelve years, following his debut novel "Grünes, grünes Gras" (Green, Green Grass) published in 2009, and it immediately made it onto the shortlist for the German Book Prize. With a novella that takes the reader on a double journey: the journey of a father with his son through the Alps - and a journey into the inner life of the protagonist.

Theo, a middle-aged humanities scholar, questions the courses of life and is in search of himself: "I had grown up and everything had become a raging whirlpool". His family and professional life seem to have been thrown off course when he and his son Moritz embark on an adventure based on the journey of Emperor Maximilian II with his elephant Soliman. The father-son team start their journey in Salzburg and after a bumpy start, a lack of planning and a number of sometimes miraculous encounters, nine-year-old Moritz disappears and Theo follows his trail across the Alps. On his hike, he wanders again and again into his innermost thoughts, questions his marriage and his decisions, while the events around him continue to spiral and even slide into the surreal.

In his novella, Peter Karoshi creates a plot framework around the journey of the two characters that is difficult to grasp and triggers melancholy. The story's adventurous and unrealistic twists and turns make it very difficult for the reader to empathize with the characters' experiences and feelings. The elephant, which both gave the work its name and provided the inspiration for the father and son's adventure, lends the events something magical, but unfortunately it quickly fades into the background after the novella begins and is forgotten. Instead, the focus shifts to a protagonist who is mentally exhausted in his search for himself and quickly finds himself in various situations that can almost be described as fantastic or dreamlike. Whether it's a wild evening in a hotel bar followed by a suspected murder or an irrational escape that ends in a bus accident - you quickly lose touch with what's happening. It is as if a veil lies over the plot of the novella - the exaggerated, ludicrous and unreal leaves the reader with a vague feeling, in the middle of a maelstrom of memory splinters and recollection. Peter Karoshi's "To the Elephants" has an experimental character, one finds only a few answers to the riddles of the text and is left with the question: Was it all just a dream?