Excerpt from The Standardization of Demoralization Procedures by Jennifer Hofmann, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Through his driver's-side window, broken and permanently cracked, wafted a smell like iron and lignite coal. Childhood memories, postwar smells. Zeiger held a tight grip on the wheel. The line at the bakery had exploded into pieces. Spontaneous, unregistered disarray. Protests in Leipzig a few weeks ago had been planned; the demonstrations last week at Alexanderplatz had been planned; Management's response to these planned happenings had been planned. Plans were made five years ahead of time. And now the baker's white apron was splattered with blood.

It had been a month since he'd last seen Lara. Lara, the blinding cherry lights ahead. Lara, the speckle of dried dirt on his windshield. Lara in the stratosphere, Lara in the ether. His whole life had reduced itself to her disappearance. He felt displeased with himself, positively disgusted with himself, as he tallied in his mind the usual routine of fruitless questions: Where had she gone? What had he done? If, as Held had once told him, the weight of the world remains static, and not a molecule of matter is ever lost but is merely recycled, transmuted, into water, into earth, into the energy of thought, was there such a thing as disappearance? And so on and so forth, until he wore himself out. This compulsion, this thinking, the whys and the hows, felt both rousing and banal, unhinged and pedestrian, but it had become a ritual, the twine holding together the softening box of his mind, and so he continued.

In rare pragmatic moments he considered inquiring with someone at the Ministry about Lara's whereabouts. He could think of some reason for his sudden interest in this innocuous waitress, perhaps turn up a lead, some direction. But it seemed shameful, blasphemous even, to speak her name within something as carnivorous as the Ministry compound, so he decided against it. Meanwhile he left keys in locks, misplaced cooking utensils he had just pulled from cupboards, forgot names, forgot dates, forgot the route to the Ministry lot, found himself smiling submissively at strangers, and had developed a death wish, passive but pronounced.

He glanced at the rearview mirror and into the bloated face of the driver behind him. The driver stared back like a man playing dead in a film. From his inner coat pocket, Zeiger retrieved his cigarettes, fumbled one into his mouth, lit it. The crack in the window sucked out the smoke. The world outside was a vacuum. He turned a dial on the dashboard and the radio sprang to life. A man was speaking, flat and throaty with a Dresden twinge that smacked of stupidity. They all had on those white gloves, yes, said the voice, and those helmets and they all stood straight at attention, those soldiers. And the Comrades in the tank brigade, they had on red berets. And Honecker was there also, and Gorbi, but I couldn't see them, just heard their voices in the microphone. And there were many pretty banners, yes, the red ones.

This was rerun coverage of the military parade along Karl-Marx-Allee one month ago, the celebration of the Republic's fortieth birthday. An event that bore strategic rehashing. Everyone had been there. Zeiger too. He would have skipped the parade, turned up at the Ministry, had he not been ordered to observe.

He'd arrived late, when the sidewalks were already crowded, and stood next to the bleachers. He'd purchased a small black-red-gold flag from a boy in blue youth organization garb, held it like a votive candle, stiffly and piously with both of his hands. Just as the Dresdner described on the radio, banners had loomed over the streets like bloodred archangels; one hue to the right and they'd have been brown. There were lashing winds and giddy children; the familiar, celebratory smell of burnt sausage and spilt beer; a thousand smiling mouths and peaks of shrill laughter. From his position at the edge of the crowd, Zeiger wasn't able to see Honecker or Gorbi. Just beyond the banister, the formation of soldiers stood at attention, the whites of their eyes blazing as they searched the crowd for familiar faces. They were smooth-faced, unnaturally tanned, with shoulders much too slim for the sharp angles of their uniforms. The safety and fate of nations were entrusted to children.

Excerpted from The Standardization of Demoralization Procedures by Jennifer Hofmann. Copyright © 2020 by Jennifer Hofmann. Excerpted by permission of Little Brown & Company. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.