Description

‘Cool, meticulously crafted and mordantly amusing’ Irish Times

‘A chilling insight into a flawed justice system’ Daily Mail

A young lawyer puts aside her sense of justice to succeed at her new firm.

A man who values silence is driven to murder by his noisy neighbours.

A cheated wife seeks revenge.

How do you decide what punishment fits the crime?

Our narrator is a man you’d never want to meet unless you really needed him. A nameless lawyer, he coolly recounts the fates of twelve characters who cross his path, uncovering the loneliness and alienation, desire and desperation which drive their choices and shape the consequences they face.

Drawn from Ferdinand von Schirach’s eminent career as a criminal defence lawyer, each story in Punishment crackles with suspense, masterfully treading the line between fiction and truth.

Publisher Review

The stories are cool, meticulously crafted, pithy and mordantly amusing . . . this is an unsettling, affecting, extremely powerful book. Highly recommended -- Declan Hughes * Irish Times * Translated with economical elegance by Hall . . . and informed by insider knowledge . . . it's a chilling insight into a flawed justice system, the people who work in it and the guilty and guileless who find themselves judged * Daily Mail * Psychologically raw . . . delivered in a crisp translation by Katharina Hall, his unfussy prose is icily effective . . . it suggests that all justice systems are flawed, that they are all just processes. And, with immense empathy, von Schirach's stories show what happens to people when they are processed. -- Christian House * Financial Times * An impressive page-turner with substance and bite * Bookmunch * Thrilling and edgy, often carrying a twist in the tale * To the Ends of the Word blog *