Uwe Laub (Germany)

Uwe Laub (b 1971), an author of science thrillers, was born in Roumania and grew up in Germany. Before becoming a writer, he worked as a stockbroker and in the pharmaceutical industry. He started writing his thrillers in his mid-thirties and is now an entrepreneur.

His debut novel about climatic changes called Blow Out (2013) was surprisingly successful. Laub’s second novel Sturm, 2018 (Storm), a thriller concentrating on storms and hurricanes, was in 2019 translated into Estonian by Piret Pääsuke and published by the publishing house Ühinenud Ajakirjad. Uwe Laub’s third novel Leben (Life) focuses on global extinction of species and the accompanying pandemic.

Laub’s thriller Storm begins with a description of all kinds of inexplicable weather phenomena: the Berlin olympic stadium is hit by a tornado, the city of Hannover by a powerful hail, the permafrost of Siberia melts due to the temperature rise , etc. There is human sacrifice, panic arises. Laub approaches the problems of climate from a definite aspect, regarding a sphere not so often talked about – climate manipulation.

The story is written following the genre rules of a thriller: the author takes the reader to a probable future showing how climate manipulation can be used as a weapon. To write this novel, the author studied its themes for several years and thus the reader gets a historical overview of the problem as well as the information about the present situation on a thrilling background.

To sum up , it can be said, using the author’s own words, that his novels discuss big global problems like the extinction of species, climate changes and weather. He tries to open up and above all to describe the big and complex connections between the processes occurring on our planet and does it in a thrilling and, above all, informative way.

This year the theme of Prima Vista is Small World. What does this pair of words mean to you?

For me, the words “small world” are the symbol of the present day global network.

If we think of the Internet the world has never been so big and at the same time so small. I can see my family or friends in the other end of the world and talk to them using a click of the mouse and sitting on my sofa. In a sense it is wonderful but it is also true that in this way understanding of the size of our planet and its sublimity becomes lost.

Tuesday, September 21st

18.00 Meeting with German writer Uwe Laub in the hall of Tartu Public Library