Readings
Leon Engler reads from his debut novel "Botany of Madness"
Friday, 30/01/2026 / 07:00 PM - 09:00 PM / Literaturhaus Uwe Johnson
"Botany of Madness" tells the story of someone who runs away from his pathologically insane family.
A young man suffers from a panicked fear of going mad. No wonder, because a stay in a psychiatric ward is almost normal in his family.
In biology class, he studies the theory of heredity. The offspring of tits are tits. The offspring of pumpkins are pumpkins. So what are the offspring of his depressive father, his alcoholic mother, his schizophrenic grandfather and his bipolar grandmother? He makes an initial extrapolation: depression: forty percent hereditary. Alcohol addiction: fifty percent hereditary. Bipolar disorder: eighty percent hereditary. The prognosis? One hundred percent bad.
He tries to escape: To New York, to Paris, to Vienna. He tries to attack: he becomes a psychologist and works in psychiatry. There, of all places, where he never wanted to go, he sees the history of his family in a new light.
All statements without guarantee.
