The Land of Laughs

The country of laughter ( engl. The Land of Laughs ) is a novel by the American writer Jonathan Carroll, who published in 1980 and 1986 by Rudolf Hermstein translated into German and published as Volume 241 of the Fantastic Library by Suhrkamp Verlag.

Action

The teacher Thomas Abbey is downright obsessed with since childhood by his favorite author Marshall France and its fantasy world. Therefore, Abbey travels to its tracks, because he wants to write a biography of him with the help of his own girlfriend Saxony. However, in the literary detective work appear puzzles that always strength leave the tangible reality and, ultimately, at the meeting with Abbey's daughter Anna in a gruesome discovery in the hometown of Marshall, Galen, Missouri, lead.

Background

"The Land of Laughter" is the debut novel Carroll and is a typical representative of the fantasy. A city or town named Galen exists in the United States each in Tennessee, New York and Montana, but not in the said state of Missouri.

Expenditure

• Jonathan Carroll: The Land of laughter. Translated from English by Rudolf Hermstein, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt / M. 1986, ISBN 3-518-38454-6, 241 pp.
• Jonathan Carroll: The Land of laughter. Suhrkamp, 1991, ISBN 978-3-518-37747-5, 220 pp.
• Jonathan Carroll: The Land of laughter. Insel Verlag, Berlin 1998, ISBN 978-3-458-16002-1. 241 pp.

Reception

For the German translation Der Spiegel wrote at the time a benevolent announcement, in which he particularly on Carroll's professional activity in Vienna hinting flirted with an analogy to The Third Man.

As the fictional character Peter Bishop from the series Fringe in the episode 14 of season 1 visits his friend, bookseller, wants to sell a customer just a first edition of the English original. Since this is fantastic realities in the book as well as the series, you can view it as a reciprocal metaphor or allusion.