by Juli Zeh
Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Nov 2021
288 pages
Genre: Thrillers
Paperback Original.
Publication Information
In this masterful novel, author Juli Zeh skillfully shifts away from the conventional tale of a middle-aged, middle-class father out for a New Year's Day bike ride to an unexpectedly dark, psychological family drama.
Lanzarote on New Year's Day: Henning is cycling up the steep path to Femés. As he struggles against the wind and the gradient he takes stock of his life. He has a job, a wife, two children―yet hardly recognizes himself anymore. Panic attacks have been pouncing on him like demons. When he finally reaches the pass in utter exhaustion, a mysterious coincidence unveils a repressed yet vivid memory, plunging him back into childhood and the traumatic event that almost cost him and his sister their lives. In this masterful novel, bestselling author Juli Zeh skillfully turns a New Year's Day bike ride into an unexpectedly dark, psychological family drama.
"[W]renching...Zeh's novel skillfully asks how a person can come to terms with a painful past that has been intentionally misremembered for the purpose of sustaining one's mental health. Readers, though, will have no trouble remembering this." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"This spine-tingler captures the peak of what appears to be a spectacularly hallucinatory middle-aged crisis." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"An experience of psychological dissection. New Year is a vertiginous plunge into the psyche of a man straining under the weight of what he believes he must achieve and, in a subtle game of smoke and mirrors, into our own neuroses. With the tale of a mad ascent, the novel defuses, with the author's characteristic scathing and elegant irony, the diktat of perfection and permanence extolled by the media that has invaded the sphere of social life and intimacy, and invites us to respond with a middle finger stuck up with pride." - Lire (France)
"Because both the thriller and the analysis of society are here intertwined so densely, New Year is perhaps Juli Zeh's best book to date." - Süddeutsche Zeitung (Germany)
This information about New Year was first featured
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Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Juli Zeh is one of Germany's most successful authors of both literary thrillers and novels. She studied law in Passau and Leipzig, and holds a doctorate in international law. She has worked at the United Nations in New York, taught at the German Institute for Literature in Leipzig, and currently lives in Brandenburg, where she is an honorary constitutional judge. Her debut novel Eagles and Angels was an international bestseller and was awarded the Deutscher Bücherpreis, and since then her books have been translated into 35 languages. She has been awarded myriad prizes for her work, including the Carl Amery Literature Prize, the Thomas Mann Prize, and the Order of Merit.
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