The people in this novel are perfectly normal fools: a husband who has terrible nightmares, a stressed pharmaceutical representative, a lawyer who is in love, an old lady whose head is full of memories, a museum lover who has the urge to fall on his knees before paintings. With casual precision, we are introduced to 28 people, along with all of their major and minor worries and dreams. A chorus of many voices emerges. Sometimes it is dissonant, but soon we realise that there are associations between them. These people are work associates, friends or relatives, cpmlete strangers. They not only share time and place; in some strange way they have something else in common.
Sabine Peters weaves an incredibly diverse and worldly narrative fabric. She creates sharp individual contours and has a keen sense of the small, the wounded. And yet we find a hint of community here, of life lived successfully, as though a huge discussion were taking place between the various generations and layers of society.
»Rarely in German literature has a theme that concerns us all been written about in such an intelligent and sensitive way.«
(Alexander Kosenina, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung)
(referring to »Feuerfreund« (Fire Friend))
The Authoress
Sabine Peters, born in 1961, studied literary studies, political science and philosophy in Hamburg. After spending several years in Rheiderland, she moved back to Hamburg in 2004. As well as novels, stories and radio plays, Sabine Peters also writes essays and critiques. Prizes include the Ernst Willner Prize at the Ingeborg Bachmann Competition, the Clemens Brentano Prize, the Evangelical Book Prize and the Georg-K. Glaser Prize.
