Literature Ship: Stefan Sommer—Partypeople

Book Party with a Reading, Discussion, and Music (in german language)

Party People
The social novel of our time, set to the rhythm of the social media generation

The first-person narrator in Stefan Sommer’s new novel has everything and nothing: As a successful techno DJ, he’s flown in to private parties thrown by the super-rich, dined on dishes prepared by haute cuisine chefs, and stayed in grand hotels. A life of luxury amid helicopter rides, infinity pools, champagne, and the increasingly grotesque whims of a superstar who is bored with himself and the world. In between: loneliness. Designer drugs and painkillers offer only temporary relief, and even Christian, a married man, quickly vanishes from the DJ’s life. During his relentless whirlwind tour around the world, the narrator eventually realizes that he is running away—from the loss of his mother, who died years earlier. Ever since, he has worn her favorite flowers as a tattoo on his skin—a tender attempt to counter the harshness of the success industry.

*Partypeople* takes a coldly comiclook at the world of big money: it tells of rich kids, tech oligarchs, performative masculinity, and new capitalism. One hopes for a way out, yet senses that there can be none.

Stefan Sommer, born in 1989, grew up in a small Swabian town. Even when he was a toddler, his grandfather predicted that he would likely end up as either a pastor or an actor. Things turned out similarly, yet differently. The thirty-four-year-old author now lives in Munich and works for the Süddeutsche Zeitung and Bayerischer Rundfunk.