Premiere reading with author Fabian Neidhardt

How does life go on after the death of great love? In March 2025, ‘Endlosschleifentage’, the third novel by Fabian Neidhardt, will be published by Haymon - a novel about grief and friendship, loss and taboos, about new beginnings and farewells. The book, which will not be published until 13 March, will be presented exclusively at the Museum for Sepulchral Culture. The reading will be accompanied musically by Fabian Neidhardt's father Ralf Neidhardt on the trumpet. 

The event is being organised in cooperation with Literaturhaus Kassel e.V. and will be hosted by Thomas Bündgen. 

David and Katha have always known each other, have grown up together and married young. But then Katha dies in a car accident and David's world comes to a standstill. She was every one of his first times, she is every memory. Kinga, Katha's best friend, who witnessed and survived the accident, tries to help, to care - while she actually has to come to terms with her own trauma. Day after day, David fights his way to the cemetery - to Katha - and wonders how to grieve. He meets Marie at the cemetery.

What does it mean to let go?

Marie is the gravedigger's daughter, who has to come to terms with her own past and doesn't believe in conventions. The cemetery is her life and she knows that no one should spend too much time here. Kinga, on the other hand, thinks that David needs to grieve first. But David can do neither. Every step in one direction is a step away from Katha. Marie's support feels like betrayal. Kinga's disappointment paralyses him. Only the music he makes sounds right.

The deeply human moments

How does it feel to lose your wife, your best friend, far too soon? How do you grieve properly? How do you find your way back into everyday life? David finds answers: in the people who give him support, in the moments that give him hope and in the new - very personal - paths that open up behind the grief.

‘Fabian Neidhardt writes as if in a film, telling of the darkest and most wonderful feelings in a stirring and intense way - there is pain and fear, but above all: warmth and hope. A novel that makes you cry and smile,’ says the publisher's announcement. 

In 2023, the author completed an internship at a funeral parlour to explore the topic of finiteness. You can read his report about it here.

Fabian Neidhardt has been writing with his left hand since he could hold a pen and has been telling stories since he was 12. Born in 1986 as the first of four in a Polish-Italian family, he lives in Stuttgart and Hamburg. After a traineeship in radio, he studied speech and communication pedagogy at the State University of Music and Performing Arts in Stuttgart and literary writing at the Hildesheim Literature Institute. Until May 2019, he trained as a storyliner at the UFA Series School in Potsdam. Since 2010, he has been a street poet, sitting in pedestrian zones with his typewriter and writing texts on demand. In 2019, he developed the prose robot that prints out stories at the touch of a button. In 2020, he received a scholarship from the Förderkreis deutscher Schriftsteller in Baden-Württemberg. As in his publishing debut ‘Immer noch wach’ (Haymon Verlag, 2021), in his second novel ‘Nur ein paar Nächte’ he tells of conflict and acceptance, of what family is and can be. 

In co-operation with the Literaturhaus Kassel e.V.