A prescient political and psychological thriller ripped from tomorrow's headlines, by one of Germany's most celebrated contemporary novelists A few short years from now, the world is an even more uncertain place than it is today, and politics everywhere is marching rightward: Trump is gone, but Brexit is complete, as is Frexit. There's a global financial crisis, armed conflict, and mass migration, and an ultrapopulist movement governs in Germany. With their democracy facing the wrecking ball, most well-off Germans turn inward, focusing on their own lives. Britta, a wife, mother, and successful businesswoman, ignores the daily news and concentrates on her family and her work running a clinic specializing in suicide prevention. But her legitimate business is connected to a secret and far more lucrative operation known as The Bridge, an outfit that supplies terrorist organizations looking to employ suicide bombers. Using a complex candidate-identifying algorithm designed by Babak, a brilliant programmer and Britta's only employee, The Bridge has effectively cornered the market, and terrorism never takes place without Britta's services--which is why news of a thwarted suicide attack in Leipzig comes as a shock. Then The Bridge's database is stolen, driving Britta, Babak, and their latest recruit into hiding. On their heels is a new terrorist organization called the Empty Hearts, a group unlike any Britta and Babak have encountered before. Part suspenseful thriller, part wickedly effective social satire, Empty Hearts is a novel for our times, examining urgent questions of morality, politics, and culture and presenting a startling vision of a future where empathy is a thing of the past.

“If you want to write a dystopian novel in these quasi-dystopian times, you need to go dark. Really dark. And the premise of Juli Zeh’s bracing, furious novel, Empty Hearts, is so dark that I laughed out loud when I read it on the book’s back cover . . . Empty Hearts has the veneer of a thriller but it’s more accurate to call it a chiller: chilling in the accuracy of its satire and chilling in its diagnosis of our modern malaise.”
***—Adam Sternbergh, New York Times Book Review*

“Empty Hearts explores interesting ideas about the price of failure to act against tyranny . . . Zeh challenges readers to consider how complicit we are in our current political dilemmas.”
***—Paula L. Woods, Los Angeles Times*

“2019 has seen a string of novelists exploring the destabilised Western political psyche, but Empty Hearts strikes me as one of the strongest so far. It asks, what if the current political climate led not to catastrophe, but to stagnation? Its answer comes in the form of both a riveting thriller and a nuanced piece of social science fiction—predictive and precautionary . . . Brilliantly executed—one of the stand-outs of the year.”
**—Helen Marshall, New Scientist**

"As dark and funny as the genre gets."
**—Boris Kachka, Vulture.com (7 New Books You Should Read this August)**

“Darkly entertaining . . . A thoughtful political thriller with a provocative sense of humor.”
***—Kirkus Reviews,* starred review**

“A gripping, character-driven thriller that’s rooted in insightful political commentary-perfect for beach reading.”
*****—Booklist***

“Will keep readers turning the pages . . . Zeh makes it easy to suspend disbelief in this cold-blooded and macabre future.”
***—Publishers Weekly***

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Autorentext

Juli Zeh

Leseprobe
Chapter 1

Knut and Janina come over at five.

The weather’s splendid. For several days now, the sun has shown the kind of strength you would hardly have thought it capable of after a typical Braunschweig winter and the drizzly first weeks of spring. The light lies like pale yellow chiffon on the smooth surfaces of the furniture, sparkles in the glasses on the table, penetrates into the remotest dust-­free corners. Three times a week, Britta has Henry, a young man from Laos, make the house spick-­and-­span. Unfortunately, the picture windows always exhibit a couple of smudges that Henry has missed.

With the children, daily routines have changed somewhat. Before, the adults would have met at dusk for the first aperitifs, not in broad daylight for dinner. But that’s normal, it’s the same for all of them, the whole army of parents with only children. Britta used to work until midnight, sleep until noon, and ingest the first solid food of the day in the early afternoon, when Babak, no morning person himself, would come to the office with something—­usually a sandwich—­for her to eat. The arrival of baby Vera seven years ago put an end to all that. Only sometimes Britta still feels a slight dizziness and something akin to alarm, symptoms of existential jet lag.

“This mess keeps falling apart,” Richard calls from the kitchen, addressing no one in particular. Out in the hallway, Britta accepts the bottle of red wine that Knut has brought, a nice gesture, even though they have a whole cellar full of Luis Felipe Edwards Cabernet Sauvignon, a 2020 Chilean she and Richard like and have grown used to. She’ll regift Knut’s Rioja, a bottle with a ribbon around its neck, when the opportunity arises.

“Sticky fingers.” Richard laughs as he raises his gummy hands in the air and greets his guests with his elbows. “I’m following the recipe exactly, but the stuff still looks like biowaste.”

Before him lie shreds of seaweed and clumps of gooey rice, the results of his wrapping experiments. Richard has got it into his head to make his own sushi this evening, and Britta never interferes in such plans. The kitchen is Richard’s domain. She’ll keep the guests entertained and make sure the children eat something, it really doesn’t matter what, by seven o’clock or so.

“Man, it looks great. We’ll get some flat spoons and eat it directly off your granite countertop,” says Knut.

It’s actually polished concrete, but Britta keeps her mouth shut. Knut’s kind of a wimp and probably not even particularly intelligent, but Britta likes him anyway, because he’s good-­humored and because his daughter, Cora, gets along so well with Vera. Seven years ago, Janina and Britta met at baby swim class, each with a screaming bundle on her arm; after that first day, they spent many a long, sluggish afternoon together. At first, they’d indulge in reciprocal venting about their troubles; later, they’d enjoy an hour or two of relative peace by the side of a play area while the two little girls kept themselves busy. This play-­date friendship has even withstood their decision to send Cora and Vera to different schools. While Knut and Janina’s daughter goes to a children’s music school where piano lessons are compulsory and smartphones prohibited, Vera is receiving a normal, Silicon Valley–­influenced education, and is certainly no worse off for it. Cora’s practicing “Faster, Faster, Little Snail” on the xylophone; Vera has just written her first program, which causes a fish to swim back and forth across her computer screen and snap at a baited hook when it’s dropped into the water.

The two girls have already disappeared into Vera’s room, while the adults are still occupied with standing around, which is apparently a phase that must be endured at every such gathering. You lean in a doorway or support yourself with both hands on the back of a chair and laugh in one another’s faces until everyone is finally relaxed enough to sit down. Britta’s house has a …