Berge, Meere und Giganten

The experimental and amazing in every sense novel "Mountains of the Sea and Giants" by Alfred Döblin stands apart not only among German and world prose in general, but also radically differs from other works of the author himself, since it is the only fantastic text by Döblin. This creative experiment and challenge that Döblin threw to himself are all the more interesting, creating a novel that cannot be defined by any of the currently known genres, but only the approximate perimeter of the genre approximation can be outlined - it is a dystopia, futurology, science fiction and even an eschatological treatise on the apocalypse.

The action of the novel takes place in the distant future for five centuries, when humanity, like life itself on Earth, undergoes global and fundamental changes. The Great Ural War as the final outcome of the primordial confrontation between Eastern and Western civilizations, the melting of Greenland's glaciers and the release of powerful prehistoric plant-animal hybrids from permafrost, genetic engineering, transhumanism and the rejection of technology in favor of a return to the simple life of long-gone and forgotten eras, the latest bizarre social and geopolitical systems, and perhaps even the apocalypse as the end of the old world and the birth of a new world, completely different and alien to our present - Deblin broadly and extensively depicts visions of the distant future of human civilization, a future that surprises and terrifies, but which, despite everything, is at the same time a logical continuation and consequence of our difficult and turbulent present.