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    Das Haus
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    Das Haus
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    Das Haus
    Audiobook2 hours

    Das Haus

    Written by Mark Z. Danielwski

    Narrated by Stefan Kaminski

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    Will Navidsons Nerven liegen blank. Sein neu gekauftes Haus hat plötzlich Türen, wo keine sein dürften. Dahinter: der Zugang zu einem Höhlensystem, das sich ständig verändert. Bei dessen Erforschung kommt es zu mysteriösen Zwischenfällen. Wohin verschwinden die Menschen im Labyrinth? Welcher Schrecken wartet in der Dunkelheit? Das Haus gilt als &die literarische Sensation des 21. Jahrhunderts&, seine Umsetzung als Hörspiel schrieb Radiogeschichte: Erstmals wurden drei WDR-Hörspiel-Versionen eines Romans simultan auf drei Wellen gesendet. Jetzt gibt's dieses Ereignis - für unbegrenztes Horror-Zapping.
    LanguageDeutsch
    PublisherDer Audio Verlag
    Release dateNov 21, 2014
    ISBN9783898139953
    Unavailable
    Das Haus

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    Reviews for Das Haus

    4/5

    3,129 ratings180 reviews

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    • 3/5
      It's really hard to know how to review this book.This book is a multi-layered onion... A guy and his wife made a series of documentary videos about their extraordinarily strange house. A whole bunch of academics, enthusiasts, and conspiracy theorists wrote articles and books about those documentaries. A blind man read all of the scholarship and then wrote his own book about the documentary, but he dictated the book to a series of trascribers, and collected the unorganized and unfinished book in a trunk. When he died, a neighbor's drug-addled friend took the trunk and organized the book into a publishable form, along with a whole bunch of his own footnotes about how he's going crazy. Then, some unknown editor edited that, and published it, and that is what we are reading. So it's hard to say what this is "about," really, because there are so many frame stories.On top of that, the book is famous for its typography. Not only are there footnotes (often with their own footnotes) and appendices, there are also pages where the words are arranged to tell the story. To be honest, this was the part of the book I was the most interested in, and also the part that fell the most flat for me. The necessarily disjointed experience of reading multiple layers of footnotes did contribute to the ultimately disjointed nature of the layered frame stories, but a lot of times, I didn't think the typography actually contributed anything to the experience. Sometimes the typography contributes to the dizzying sense of confusion and chaos (especially when it prevents you from finding the footnote you're looking for), but I don't think the word-pictures enriched the experience of the book.The book has a lot of loose ends, which is in character with the chaos of the whole thing, but which left me frustrated. I kept waiting for a big reveal, or for the actual big scary scene, but they never happened.To be honest, the storyline of the compiler, who does a lot of drugs and has a lot of sex and is slowly going insane in the rambling footnotes, didn't do anything for me. I could have skipped it and would have enjoyed the book just as much. Other than his growing insanity and paranoia, there doesn't seem to be any connection between his story and the story of the house. The aspect I enjoyed the most was the satire of academia: all the footnotes and scholarship and long tangents about labyrinths were a brilliant commentary on academia's rambling self-importance. (My dissertation committee told me I needed to be more wordy to add 40 pages to my dissertation.)So... I think this book deserves a lot of credit for being complex and clever and unique, but that doesn't necessarily mean it is a good book. It feels pretty masturbatory - Danielewski seems more interested in showing off his genius than writing an enjoyable book.
    • 5/5
      I DID IT! I somehow got through this book despite being scared to read it at night, but i pulled through and DID IT!

      House of Leaves is a total mind bender. It several stories in one. The main one being around Karen Green & Will Navidson moving into a house that is bigger inside than it is outside. It causes additional strain on their marriage and they are documenting the strange addition to their house as Navidson and a team of men go explore the darkness. Except this is actually a movie, that isn’t real and created by an older blind man, Zampanò in his book that is analyzing the Navidson movie. He does into great detail to make the movie seem like it actually existed, he uses a mixture of real sources and made up ones (including fake interviews with Stephen King) to pull this off. Except Zampano is dead and his work got into the hands of Johnny Truant who decides to edit and add his own notes about his life and his findings. His life spins out of control and he’s wondering if its happening because of the book. Confusing right? But it’s not! The notations and fonts really keep you on track of what is happening to who. I don’t think there was a moment where I was confused.

      The book is scary, but it’s also about relationships, the main one being the relationship between Karen Green and Will Navidson (husband & wife), the strain before the house, the additional problems because of the house and then eventually clarity that leads to repairing their bond. The other focus is on what the hell is going in the house, why is there this never ending room that expands and shrinks, multiple theories are thrown out there, but then you remember this is a novel about a novel about a fake movie that is being edited and the editor is also wondering is this somehow a real house and movie and is it making him crazy. He is not a reliable character at all and that just adds to it. Ultimately the ending is up in the air, the reader is left to make their own conclusions about Navidson’s house and Johnny (which is actually expected given some of the things said about the hallway, some people have to know and become obsess, while others can walk away from it and not care they don’t know the reason for it).

      No doubt House of Leaves is intimidating, it is a long book and sounds complicated, but the layout of the book actually makes it shorter (many pages only have a few words), a good 200 or so pages are not part of the plot, but made up of index, exhibits and 2 appendixes. As for complicated, as I said I never felt confused about what was going on and was able to keep track. Mark Z. Danielewski is just a fantastic writer I guess, because I cannot believe he wrote something so in depth that was still easy to follow. It sucks you in, it plays with your mind and spits you out. Just amazing.
    • 4/5
      A story within a story within a story, about a house that is bigger on the inside and is constantly shifting, the family that explores and documents it, a man with questionably sanity, who writes a scholarly work on the house, the family, and the documentary they create, another man on the brink of madness, who finds the first madman's work and edits it, and the physical book itself, which reflects in various ways the labyrinthine nature of the house and the stories encircling it.In other words, this one is WEIRD, folks. But in a good way, generally. There were places where I started getting annoyed and tried not to convince myself that the whole thing was pretentious and forced. But in the end the story of the house was too good to stop reading.
    • 4/5
      Well, that was intense.
    • 4/5
      gimmicky but affecting.
    • 3/5
      It was complex and I'm still not quite sure what to make of it. It's one of those books that has to sink in, I think. It was several stories all intertwined in one: Johnny Truant finds a manuscript in an apartment of dead man about a house that had a never ending hallway. There were many books and papers written about the Navidson family's strange house, and the old blind man, Zampano, was collecting and writing about. Reading the manuscript and all the other research he has compiled makes Johnny go insane. At least, it seems that way. The structure of the book was really interesting: there were footnotes and parts printed upside down, sideways, backwards. It was definitely one of those books that you have to work for and can't read with one eye while doing something else, which is what I tend to do a lot.
    • 4/5
      This book is incredible and mind-bending, in turns creepy and too bizarre for words. It's clever and intelligent (even if narcissistic), but also strikingly beautiful every once in a while. Reading this was a wild ride for me and I did NOT love every minute of it, but for some reason I still really got a kick out of trying to solve the strange (and potentially unsolvable) puzzle.

      To put it another way:

      scent [of] extinguished ash
      mythology opening ominous names
      elevated yearning, endless staircase
      stretching out reams, racing over woe
      pacing, etching, longing, aching, fading ink, nearing abyss

      I dock a star because some of the red herrings and musings were gratuitous and crude, the narrator(s) was(were) infinitely unlikeable/unreliable/unbelievable, and Mark Z. Danielewski is clearly a bit too pleased with himself.
    • 4/5
      Halfway through this novel I wasn't sure whether to call this book brilliant or pretentious. I still don't know.However, I enjoyed the actual story about the house a lot. I was less enamoured with the footnotes and the appendix and the coded letters. I was also too lazy to get a mirror and read the mirrored text or dig my way through page upon page of seemingly random names.I guess, in the end this is a puzzle, and if you want to give it a superficial read you'll find a compelling story and if you want to dig deeper you can probably dig for years and still find new things. It's definitely not a book for everyone, but I enjoyed myself.
    • 4/5
      I have no idea how to review this book. I bought my copy years ago at a garage sale, not really knowing what it was all about, but it was a huge tome of a book and the formatting looked interesting, so for a couple dollars, why not? It wasn't until I got it home and did some superficial research that I realized it was somewhat of a cult classic. I was satisfied that I'd gotten a good bargain, but the book itself was intimidating and it sat on my shelf for quite a few years.On the surface, this is a story about an unusual house. It's not exactly haunted, but it's not as it appears. It's larger on the inside than on the outside, but it's never quite the same, becoming alternately bigger & smaller. It's cold and it's dark, with hallways that never end, and stairways that seemingly stretch to infinity. It's creepy, but not quite evil. The house has a personality of its own, although the story also explores the dynamics of the 4-person family living within it, as well as a few additional characters who help explore the house.However. That's only a portion of this book. There's also another totally different story line occurring concurrently. It's weaved throughout in a different font and format. And then there are appendices, numerous footnotes, photos, drawings, poems, etc, as well as all types of unusual formatting (upside down, backwards, spread out, in a spiral, and on and on.) All kinds of craziness, really. You can't go into this book lightly. You've got to be in the right frame of mind and be willing to devote some time and energy into reading and understanding it. And so this is where it's difficult to write a review. I think this book would be best read as a group read, where the readers read a few chapters, discuss, and repeat. Originally, that was my intent, but my irregular reading pattern in this instance didn't allow me to keep up with that schedule, so I went it alone, but I also found that much of it was over my head and I needed to discuss it with someone, which I was unable to do. As I said above, you need to be able to devote time and energy to this book, and I just wasn't quite feeling it. I enjoyed the baseline story, the one about the house and its inhabitants. But the rest....the footnotes and side story and such....I found them distracting. I appreciate what the author was trying to create -- there's obviously some genius here. But ultimately, so much of it was beyond my comprehension and energy level that I just couldn't give it the full attention and understanding that it probably deserves. It's one of those books that should probably be revisited someday, and it's one that I'll likely keep for that reason.
    • 4/5
      This book was remarkable! I fell in love with the book immediately after seeing how it was written, and wanted to read it! Although it was kind of heavy to read at times, I was determined to finish the book! (It took me 3 years, off and on to finish) It had a convoluted story line that, as long as you paid close attention - was easy to understand in the end. I'm sure that if I didn't have concentration problems - it would have been much easier to understand. The story was well written and I enjoyed every bit of it!
    • 3/5
      There's a nice little horror story at the core of House of Leaves, but digging down to it is profoundly annoying thanks to a wonky insistence on the exact sort of postmodern tripe that makes Derrida et al. legendarily unreadable. The endless references, footnotes, and pseudo-academic dick-swinging make the novel unimpeachable in a weasely way: even its really bad parts are bad on purpose. It's too long on purpose. The type is hard to read on purpose. It's uneven and jerky on purpose. Everything's equally (un)true, un(interesting), (un)convincing. That's fine by me - I'll split the difference for a clean 3/5.
    • 2/5
      I hated reading this book, but I also know it'll stay with me for a long while. The horror isn't horrifying, and the footnotes are awful - the joke of fake references wears off after a couple of pages, and the story of Johnny Truant is appallingly bad. House of Leaves is pretentious and boring (although no doubt it's author would claim that's deliberate). Still, at least it's different.
    • 4/5
      Crazy. Literally.
    • 5/5
      Immensely challenging. This book expected a lot of my concentration and expanded my expectations in every direction. In the reality of the novel's context I'm not sure what, if anything, I read is true at all. The imagination and creativity Danielewski has in his pinky finger outstrips the vastness of space.
    • 5/5
      Do the words meta, post-modern, or experimental make you cringe when used to describe books? Then turn back now. I feel the need to say that up front because many people seem to go into this book expecting a horror novel and wind up wasting their money. Just take a look at the genres that goodreads lists this as. Horror, fiction, fantasy, and mystery. With inapt labels like that, it's easy to see how people could get the wrong idea.

      This is not a horror novel, nor is it a mystery novel or a fantasy novel. This book is, among many other things, a personal story about the author's parents presented as experimental literary fiction that's thinly veiled as a horror novel. Confused? Good, stay that way for now, and don't think too hard about what I just said. I'm not that into horror novels, and I generally like post-modern and experimental stuff, and I knew what I was getting into when I bought this. Know what you're getting into, that's all I'm trying to say.

      Here's the basic concept as clear and concise as I can tell it. There are essentially three narrators that will be addressing you, the reader.

      1) Zampano, an old blind man
      2) Johnny Truant, a thirty-something druggie
      3) The "editors"

      Johnny's friend, Lude, knows Zampano because he lives in the same apartment building. The old man, ominously, tells Lude he's going to die soon, and does. After the body is gone, Lude and Johnny sneak into the apartment to take a look around at Zampano's things. They find a crazy manuscript, which Johnny takes home with him.

      The manuscript is a non-fiction book/dissertation about a documentary called "The Navidson Record." The Navidson Record is about a famous photojournalist named Will Navidson and his family moving into a new house that is bigger on the inside. When I say non-fiction, I mean it. It reads like a textbook. On every page there are footnotes about other articles and other books that reference this documentary that, by all accounts, doesn't exist (I'll get to this in a second).

      It starts out simple at first. After the family returns home from vacation they notice a hallway on the second floor connecting two bedrooms that wasn't there before. They track down a blueprint of the building and see that there is a space between the walls, although it's not supposed to be a finished hallway with doors. Okay, no big deal, maybe they didn't notice the doors before, it's a new house after all and they had just moved in before going on vacation. Then comes the realization that measuring the house through that hallway results in an extra inch that shouldn't exist, and that can't be explained. Then a new door appears, on the first floor this time, that should lead to an empty back yard but instead leads to a long, dark hallway that extends into an endless labyrinth of cavernous, thousand-foot rooms that leads to god knows where and contains god knows what, and the exploration of this door is the main focus of the documentary.

      So Johnny finds this manuscript, reads it, edits it, adds his own footnotes relating to research he's done on Zampano's life and the manuscript contents (translations of foreign phrases, for instance), but also personal tangents about his own life and stream of consciousness ramblings. In the prologue where he explains how he found the manuscript, he also says that The Navidson Record doesn't actually exist. Johnny's editors also appear in footnotes and in the first say they have never met Johnny Truant in person, only communicating via letters and rare phone calls. Weird, right?

      What follows is 528 pages of an interwoven, multi-layered story. On the one hand, you have Zampano's non-fiction book about this fictitious documentary, which simmers as a slow-paced "found-footage" horror novel that can be unsettling, thought-provoking, but is likely to disappoint hardcore horror fans looking for adrenaline-pumping scares.

      Then you have Johnny's story, told through long footnotes, which is more vague and slow to reveal itself, but the basic idea is that although he knows the manuscript is fiction, the act of reading it causes him to lose his marbles. Whether the manuscript or Johnny's brain chemistry is to blame is up to the reader. Whether Johnny is even telling the truth is up to the reader. And, to be honest, Johnny's parts can sometimes be hard to read because he's just pitiable and depressing and the stream of consciousness prose can wear down your focus. It gets Joyce-esque at times, though only for short stretches, because Danielewski is a nice man who wants you to have a good time, unlike Joyce, who hates you and hates fun. Then the "story" part ends, and you have 130 pages of appendices (which you should read) which include things like:

      Zampano's writings which are not a part of The Navidson Record
      The obituary of Johnny's dad
      Childhood letters from Johnny's crazy, institutionalized, long dead mother
      Poems

      So what does it all mean?

      Well, it means a clever and perhaps over-educated man named Mark Danielewski decided to write a novel that experiments with the format of the novel, that pushes the boundaries of what a novel can be and what it can do. While much of it could quite fairly be called a gimmick, and it won't be redefining how all novels are written going forward, it's a gimmick that works, that is unique, that is stimulating, that is discussion-worthy, that makes the world more interesting by existing, and isn't that what good art is supposed to do? It is an unmitigated success at being singular, and because it is singular it will inspire intense love and intense hatred from different people.

      It means that while there are answers, you will have to work for them. I mean this both figuratively and literally. On the literal side, there is a letter in the appendices that is written in a simple code, which you will have to translate into a coherent message with pen and paper. And that's a code that is plainly said to be a code. There are other codes that are truly hidden.

      Many sections have weird, cluttered layouts that make the act of reading them hard, and make tracking down the right footnote a scavenger hunt. You'll be presented with footnotes that make no sense until you realize the text is broken up over several pages and presented backwards. There are a lot of elements to the story, little throwaway lines and facts that you need to remember, or write down. How did Johnny's dad die. How did Navidson's dad die. Stuff like that. While it's not absolutely necessary, I'd recommend having a notebook handy starting on page one. I have an amazing memory, took notes here and there, and still wish I'd taken more. Like I said, this book is work. It's fun work though, depending on your tastes and personality. I'm an INTP and I loved it. Your mileage may vary.

      On the figurative side, the book still won't hold your hand and spell out what it all means in flashing neon. That's up to you to figure out by gathering all the evidence together and deconstructing the book on several different levels by asking yourself what's true and what isn't, what matters and what doesn't, what's literal and what's figurative, what's the metanarrative, what's the subtext. Ultimately it's up to you to decide when you're satisfied with your answer.

      While this is nowhere near as open to interpretation as most books you'd label as post-modern or modernist, it is still open to interpretation compared to a typical novel, which isn't open to interpretation at all. There are no easy answers, no definitive answers, but there are satisfying answers that I firmly believe are more or less what the author intended, if you're willing to put in the effort to discover them and have a flexible mind that delights in abstract concepts. Alternatively there are, of course, existing breakdowns of it on the internet that you can turn to for some help, although none I've read have gone far enough into speculation. They present facts and evidence, point out what's true or not, but none of them have drawn the kind of final conclusion that I've drawn. That's how it should be. You should decide for yourself. If none of this sounds like fun to you, I recommend giving this one a pass.
    • 4/5
      The scare tactic adopted by HoL lies in presenting itself as the latest in a sequence of works, each a study of one that came before, originating in a filmed exploration of a very peculiar residence. This residence has the ability to filter its maddening influence all the way up through each of those layers. By that token, this LT review could even constitute part of the chain with a little imagination. The mood is augmented with visual evidence of prior investigators' minds having gone awry as cohesive studies become less organized, studious footnotes become more bizarre, and soon the text of HoL itself is turning upside down, backwards or reverse and passing through different colours in a type-setter's worst nightmare. There's two ways this novel's bizarre layout and story might mesh; either the story is merely wallpaper and this is a spoof of critical study (because the footnote sources do become ridiculous after a while), or else the layout is meant to make the story more creepy and effective. The emphasis alternates between these approaches, so that it could be viewed and potentially enjoyed either way. I appreciate there's more thought put into the layout choices than is sometimes obvious, as a bit of googling will reveal. There may be more depth to the story as well. I think it might be about the various ways of confronting death and mortality - a house of leave-takings. If I pursue that any further I'll begin to sound like one of the footnotes. If you can see past the combined distraction of layout and footnotes to concentrate on the story of the house and its effect on those who study it, you might find some scares here. Personally I found the story was interrupted far too frequently to maintain atmosphere, the footnotes too disparate in style and degree of relevance. Alternatively (I would say more easily), you can indulge in appreciating the artistry when it isn't being juvenile. It's a unique experience that's not too taxing, but keep your expectations in check.
    • 2/5
      And now, a moment of silence for the time I wasted reading House of Leaves.
    • 2/5
      If James Joyce had tried his hand at horror, this might be it.If the Beast and the Minotaur were combined in an episode of Doctor Who, it might be reminiscent of this.Ultimately unsatisfying and unrecommendable.
    • 1/5
      I tried, but the quadruple layers (Navidson's film, Zampano's fake critique, Truant's story, and the editors' comments) of the story muddled each other too much. Truant is the most problematic since his footnotes rambled and took me away from the more intertwined threads of Navidson and Zampano. But even Zampano's criticism distracted from the central horror plot. I'm a little disappointed I couldn't stick with this book long enough to get to the really weird pages of almost no text on a page, insets that overlap the main page's text, multi-directional text, and collages of fonts, colors, and editing marks. But it just seemed like Danielewski was trying too hard to be subversive. I like more humor with my metafiction, thank you very much.Attempted May 2017: finished introduction, stopped around p. 50
    • 5/5
      Weirdest. Book. Ever.
    • 2/5
      David Foster Wallace writes a horror novel - maybe. Unfortunately my reading of this novel was interrupted by a person from Porlock with a much more interesting tale to tell. When I returned to the novel I found the book inexplicably missing. I can only speculate that, left to it's own devices, it disappeared up it's own fundament.
    • 5/5
      Unbelievably great. Absolutely unique. No book like this is in existence. If you want to read something unforgettable, that is your choice. Horror, love, satire, philosophy, humour - all of that in perfect proportions are mixed beautifully here. IMHO, MUST read.
    • 2/5
      Well, it's stylish and all, but the substance isn't there. All form, no function. There is a lot going on in this book, and not all of it good. It is a story by Zampano, put together (and footnoted at length) by Johnny Truant, and it's all about a documentary called "The Navidson Record" by Will Navidson. All of it concerns a house, and the word house is written in blue ink throughout this book. The main story is okay, the footnote story about Truant is not, and the endless other footnotes are not worth the time or ink. And all of the stuff at the end is just useless. I kept thinking as I read this that it had better be worth all the effort at the end, that the story was good enough to justify how difficult it is to read. But honestly, it isn't. I really think that if the author had only put in the Zampano story, he would have had something. But he went for this stylish mish-mash format, and for me, it didn't work.
    • 3/5
      I read this book based on the recommendation of a family member. It was a very interesting read. It took a lot of work, and at times felt rather dry (since it is written like a thesis), but I enjoyed the horror aspect, especially when the house was explored. There is a lot on the internet about this book so I won't repeat what is easily found elsewhere. However, I would recommend this story to those looking for something complex and layered with plenty of psychological nuances.
    • 5/5
      The story of a found manuscript that plunges an L.A. tattoo apprentice into the chilling and creepy 'study' of a family and their shape shifting home. The off the wall, abstract style can be a challenge but it is worth it. No other horror/thriller story has ever creeped me out so much.
    • 5/5
      This book was the inspiration for my senior seminar project in college. Very bizzare book--it actually gave me nightmares! I should re-read it...
    • 5/5
      At its core, the story about The Navidson Record was an enthralling journey into the unknown. A story about "nothing" but so mysterious. I liked the presentation of The Navidson Record being told through Zampano and his academic critique of the academic critique of The Navidson Record. I was drawn into the story telling and it made me wish The Navidson Record actually existed. Johnny Truant's tales were equally entertaining and his descent into darkness as Zampano's transcript becomes to overwhelming him. A great story that will spark discussion behind the meaning of the book.
    • 2/5
      I don't get it.The only explanation I can come up with is that the entire thing (Zampano, house, et al.) is in Johnny's head because it is inconceivable to me that any of the women in his meandering footnotes would have actually slept with him seeing how he has about as much characterization as a damp washcloth. Ergo, the entire thing must be pure Johnny bullsh*t.
    • 4/5
      House of Leaves is a must read! Absolutely frightening! You will have to suffer through some slow parts consisting of an orgy of wordplay that becomes quite monotonous, but they are relatively short and the rest of the book is mind-blowing! Really two stories in one that interweave seamlessly. Also recommend the Appendix, about 100 pages, that goes into more about Mr. Truant, the fictitious author of The Navidson Record!
    • 5/5
      This book itself is an experience. It's different, brilliantly creepy, and a lot of fun to read. I found all of the plot-lines very effective, and they were woven together brilliantly. One of my favorite novels.