We Are Utopia

We Are Utopia, published as We Are God's Utopia in the United States, is a 1942 novella by the German writer Stefan Andres.

Plot

The story is set during the Spanish Civil War and takes place in a monastery transformed into a war prison after the monks were killed. One of the prisoners, Paco, had been a monk at the same monastery 20 years earlier, before he was excommunicated and went to work as a sailor. The lieutenant Pedro, who is responsible for having the monks killed and for planning to execute all the prisoners, struggles with guilt and discusses this with Paco, asking him for absolution.

Publication

The book was published in Germany by in 1942, when Stefan Andres lived in exile in Italy with his Jewish wife. Because of his particular situation, Andres has been described as an author who lived in inner emigration abroad. We Are Utopia was published in English in 1950, in a translation by Cyrus Brooks in the United Kingdom and by Elita Walker Caspar, as We Are God's Utopia, in the United States.
Along with the 1936 novella El Greco Paints the Grand Inquisitor, it is Andres' most famous work and became widely read in Germany in the period after World War II. It was adapted into the West German television film Wir sind Utopia, directed by and starring and Alexander Radszun, which premiered on ZDF on 23 February 1987.