Norman Ohler

He tries to write like this and that's very hard to achieve.

That's actually where the writing becomes poetic.

So for me, Nietzsche also is like a poet.

The aphorisms is poetry.

So Nietzsche also stylistically, since you asked, was very important to me.

So Camus, Nietzsche, James Joyce.

And then just Kafka also, I like Kafka always.

And I like Thomas Mann.

I don't know how well he translates, but in German, it's interesting, his take on how to, it's funny.

He's a very funny guy, even though he's like, he talks too much, but he's good.

So I always wanted to have these guys as my colleagues, basically.

Are they there somewhere in your head as you're writing?

Less and less, but it was like an incentive to be part of that club, like to be able to write a book and it's out there and it's perfect and you're on one level with Camus.

It's very hard to do.

Let's say you become a carpenter, which is also, you know, a very challenging job, but you don't have these kind of great, well, you have Jesus, I guess, as you're called, potential colleague.

Yeah, sure.

I just like these writers, these two.

So the ones I mentioned, and also then Thomas Pynchon, who wrote Gravity's Rainbow, which I think is one of the best novels of the 20th century.

And I read that in Berlin in the late 90s and it really blew my mind.

I think it's an absolute masterpiece.