Deschner wrote his novels in 1956 and 1958 when he was in his early thirties. Both are distinctly autobiographical. His literary debut, "The Night Surrounds My House," was particularly well received by critics. Wolfgang Koeppen was extraordinarily impressed, Walter Muschg described the book as "a vehement matter that one cannot escape," and Peter Rühmkorf called it "one of those rare books today: a book of courage and musicality." Even today, this "radical autobiography" (Michael Schmidt-Salomon) is appreciated as "an eruption, a cry, a manifesto of a bleeding brain, the work of a genius without a world" (Süddeutsche Zeitung). Both books continue to be regarded as "gems of immediate post-war literature" (Nürnberger Nachrichten) and as "works of linguistic art of high caliber" (Wiener Zeitung).