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The contribution brings criteria of critical dystopia into dialogue with a village novel of the 21st century, Mischa Kopmann’s Dorfidioten. The novel, told in the present tense from the perspective of the protagonist, depicts his rural home as a sometimes-gloomy place, and is read in this article as a critical-dystopian homeland novel (‘Heimatroman’). The introduced characteristic of ‘affective ambiguity’ points to contradictory feelings of ‘Heimat’ (home) and to the complexity of the home discourse. Finally, the article shows how Dorfidioten comments on the discourse of commemorative culture and calls for a reappraisal of the local past. In this way, the novel unfolds a political quality that wants to activate and, within the framework of the critical dystopia, functions as a utopian element. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]