Juli Zehs Corpus Delicti: Visionäre Dystopie, Erinnerung und zwiespältiges Heimatverständnis.

In the novel Corpus Delicti: Ein Prozess Juli Zeh conveys a picture of current social grievances using the distancing technique of utopia/dystopia: A totalitarian state, in which the health of all citizens is raised to a raison d’état, demands that individual freedoms be renounced in return for a guaranteed pain-free and suffering-free life. Utopian traits of a supposedly ideal world mix with the dystopian traits of a gloomy trial. The traditional concept of ‘Heimat’ (home) is given a dualistic interpretation, alluding to todayʼs globalized, disoriented world in which people are looking for fixed points of reference. Zeh’s dualistic understanding of home between attachment to space on the one hand and detachment from the same floating buildings on the other hand, is received in Corpus Deliction the basis of Moritz’ nature-loving down-to-earthness as Mia’s reference in memory. The emergence of totalitarian government techniques in the fight against the current Covid-19 pandemic shows that a feeling of insecurity in the absence of limited, manageable scopes can easily lead to states of anxiety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]