Description

A thrilling, filmic immersion into Berlin’s legendary club scene – a skillfully told novel about the fragility of life.

Berlin, Goerlitzer Park: The body of a young woman in a white wedding dress floats in the canal. Who is she, and where does she come from? Suspended drugs investigator Tommy trawls Berlin’s clubs and criminal clans to uncover the woman’s story.

On his odyssey through the city, he meets survivors and fighters, the lost and stranded from all over the world: from the Japanese tattoo master to the Indian fire-eater. Wide awake and dead tired, suspended between a dreamscape and reality, Tommy dives deeper and deeper into the Berlin underworld and into his own past.
A breathless noir novel that is as hard-hitting as it is emotional, exploring the fragility of life and our longing for community.

PRAISE FOR One Clear, Ice-cold Morning at the Beginning of the Twenty-first Century

“A highly original and often hypnotic work . . . exactly the type of book that readers in search of striking European voices should embrace” John Boyne (author of THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PYJAMAS), Irish Times

“A brilliantly kaleidoscopic morality tale”- Eileen Battersby, Financial Times

“A magnificent achievement, a novel of terrific originality” – Charlie Connelly, New European

“The exhilarating narrative is wonderfully concise, and the imagery is intensely cinematic” – Barry Forshaw, Guardian

Translated from the German by Jamie Bulloch

Publisher Review

Tells an unaffected, gritty, exciting story that you can immediately imagine as a film -- Felix Mueller * Berliner Morgenpost * The panorama of characters is intoxicating -- Margarete Affenzeller * Der Standard * Schimmelpfennig the novelist, like the playwright, succeeds in making his characters lively and believable with just a few strokes -- Monika Wolting * literaturekritik.de * A restless novel written in clear language by a dramatist used to condensing events into vivid scenes. -- Anne Fritsch * Munich Feuilleton * An intoxicating sequence of scenes, with the sober realization that nothing can end well here -- Maike Schiller * Hamburger Abendblatt * A breathless noir novel full of fragile characters, an a powerfully compelling read - the pages practically turn by themselves -- Angelika Grabher-Hollenstein * APA *