Marc-Uwe Kling Books In Order

Publication Order of Die Känguru-Chroniken Books

Publication Order of QualityLand - Saga Books

Publication Order of Children's Books

Marc-Uwe Kling is a German songwriter, comedian, satirist, and author of literary fiction from Berlin. Most of his early works were a series of poetry and playing with the “Die Gesellschaft” punk band. Since 2003, he has been a regular performer on a variety of stages in Berlin. He has also been very active performing poetry slams and at Kabarett and literary events around Germany. He was the founder of the “Leseduen,” literally lecture stage, a public literary event, and since 2005 he toured with his team all over Berlin. However, he is better known for his radio broadcast “Neues vom Kanguru” that he hosts for a radio station in Potsdam. He often talks about the same themes that he writes about in his debut novel “The Kangaroo Chronicles.” In his later years, he wrote very popular novels that tell of his life with a roommate he calls communist kangaroo. He went to Freie Universität Berlin where he studied Philosophy and Dramatics. He is a two-time champion of the German Poetry Slam and has won a ton of awards for his standup and poetry routines. He has also won the German Audiobook Award, the German Cabaret Award while his Kangaroo Trilogies have gone on to become bestsellers in his native Germany. “Quality Land” his 2020 novel was called the best science fiction novel by jury and won the German Science Fiction Award in 2018.

A lot of Kling’s fiction work is a comedic portrayal of everyday annoyances though he likes to infuse the political into it. Most of his novels criticize right wing politics and he has also been known to criticize Donald Trump and “Alternative fur Deutschland,” the far-right populist party in Germany. In his novels and on his podcast, he criticizes bureaucracy, capitalism, authoritarianism and the police and makes fun of the left, and the ideas of the social conservatives. His “Kangaroo Chronicles” series is deemed required reading for anyone with left-leaning politics in Germany. The first novel of the series “The Kangaroo Chronicles” was published in 2009 while its translation in English was published in 2016. In 2017, he published “Qualityland” his cyberpunk comedic dystopian novel. The novel criticizes and tackles subjects of social relationships, consumerism, populism, capitalism, and politics in the age of social media. The novel is an amazing satire of the future that has been translated into more than two dozen novels and is set to be adapted into a TV series by HBO.

Marc-Uwe Kling’s novel “The Kangaroo Chronicles” is the story of the author and his roommate nicknamed kangaroo that writes funny stories and songs. The man publishes novels that criticize capitalism and is doing quite well for himself as his works have become bestsellers. The kangaroo came into the country as an immigrant looking for work but had over time become an antifascist and communist though for the most part, he is an anarchist. Just like a kangaroo, boxing is something he loves and always has some boxing gloves he totes around. He is also a founded of a club known as the “Fight Club,” where his pers learn how to fight Nazis. The novel’s antipathy against capitalism is understandable, particularly in light of how bad of a hand it has dealt to the character. Marc-Uwe refuses to paly by the rules as he refuses to pay rent and becomes a squatter, then he goes further to claim free service from the electricity station, the waterworks, and train stations. The novel ends in Nirvana and makes for a classical social community as the characters discuss controversial life issues. For instance, they discuss things such as what kind of passive resistance is acceptable or effective and why does everyone have to place their bags into the conveyer belt at airport security.

“QualityLand” by Marc-Uwe Kling is a dystopian novel that imagines a future set in an unspecified western nation. In QualityLand, relationships, leisure time and work are optimized by algorithms. The self-driving car knows where one wants to go, “QualityPartners” knows the best romantic partner for you, “TheShop” sends you all the goods you need without having to order them. No one has to make hard decisions as the system knows what everyone needs. However, Peter the machine-scrapper believes that his life is not what it should be. If the system is as perfect as it is touted to be why did Sandra Admin decide to leave him and got for someone suggested by QualityPartner? Why is he rated at 10 which is just a level above people deemed useless? Why are there combat robots that suffer from PTSD or drones that have a phobia of light? He also got a pink vibrator that looks like a dolphin and he is convinced that they may not have a perfect system after all. It is a humorous, visionary and satirical novel that takes a look at the pitfalls and promises of digitization.