is increasingly active as a director. Kunkel spent the spring of 2015 as writer in residence at Monte Verità in Ticino, where his philosophical treatise Mir blüht ein stiller Garten was written. The book was published in 2016. Controversy Shortly before going to press in spring of 2004, the publishing house Rowohlt discontinued its collaboration with Kunkel. The publisher Alexander Fest succinctly justified this by citing differences over content and aesthetic issues. As a result, Final Stage was published a few months later in an abridged version by Eichborn Berlin. The central thread of the fictional plot is built around the production and trade of blue flicks (pornographic films) conducted by employees of the "SS-Hygiene Institute Berlin" in North Africa. Although the so-called Sachsenwald movies are part of the collection of the renowned media expert Werner Nekes (*1944 - †2017), the authenticity of these films has been questioned, but later clearly confirmed. Rowohlt's rejection resulted in a discussion in many German newspapers and magazines. While opinions differed widely on whether Rowohlt's move was justified, the novel itself was criticized in most media for different reasons. Opinions differed widely on the quality of the text. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, on the other hand, called the novel a "brilliantly written, tremendously interesting manuscript by one of the best German authors of the younger generation." A "profoundly cynical attempt" to exorcise the horrors of German history "with a wild round of disgust and at the same time to whitewash them by painting a broad picture of Allied crimes," was of another critic's verdict of the same the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. In August 2020, Kunkel published an unabridged version of his scandalized novel Final Stage, which contains the so-called discarded passages cited by Der Spiegel in their entirety. The difference from the 2004 first edition is exactly 132 pages. The media diary Open for Shooting (original title:Zum Abschuss freigegeben) was published at the same time. Kunkel describes here how his work was censored by his former publisher and how he was disavowed by the German media over a considerable period of time. Thor Kunkel emigrated to Switzerland in 2009. Since then he regards himself as an exiled author. His website bears the title: Displaced person like. Personal creed "I am the drop of cold air in the global warming of German literature." Thor Kunkel, 2021 Bibliography Novels Das Schwarzlicht-Terrarium (2000) Ein Brief an Hanny