Liminal

A thrilling, filmic immersion into Berlin's legendary club scene - a skillfully told novel about the fragility of life.

Berlin, Gorlitzer Park: The body of a young woman in a white wedding dress floats in the canal. Who is she, and where does she come from? Suspended drugs investigator Tommy trawls Berlin's clubs and criminal clans to uncover the woman's story.

On his odyssey through the city, he meets survivors and fighters, the lost and stranded from all over the world: from the Japanese tattoo master to the Indian fire-eater. Wide awake and dead tired, suspended between a dreamscape and reality, Tommy dives deeper and deeper into the Berlin underworld and into his own past.

A breathless noir novel that is as hard-hitting as it is emotional, exploring the fragility of life and our longing for community.

PRAISE FOR One Clear, Ice-cold Morning at the Beginning of the Twenty-first Century

"A highly original and often hypnotic work . . . exactly the type of book that readers in search of striking European voices should embrace" John Boyne (author of THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PYJAMAS), Irish Times

"A brilliantly kaleidoscopic morality tale"- Eileen Battersby, Financial Times

"A magnificent achievement, a novel of terrific originality" - Charlie Connelly, New European

"The exhilarating narrative is wonderfully concise, and the imagery is intensely cinematic" - Barry Forshaw, Guardian

Translated from the German by Jamie Bulloch

Tells an unaffected, gritty, exciting story that you can immediately imagine as a film -- Felix Mueller Berliner Morgenpost
The panorama of characters is intoxicating -- Margarete Affenzeller Der Standard
Schimmelpfennig the novelist, like the playwright, succeeds in making his characters lively and believable with just a few strokes -- Monika Wolting literaturekritik.de
A restless novel written in clear language by a dramatist used to condensing events into vivid scenes. -- Anne Fritsch Munich Feuilleton
An intoxicating sequence of scenes, with the sober realization that nothing can end well here -- Maike Schiller Hamburger Abendblatt
A breathless noir novel full of fragile characters, an a powerfully compelling read - the pages practically turn by themselves -- Angelika Grabher-Hollenstein APA

Roland Schimmelpfennig, born in 1967, is Germany's most celebrated contemporary playwright. He began his career as a journalist before studying to be a theatre director, and his plays have now been performed in more than forty countries. Schimmelpfennig is the recipient of the highest Playwriting Award in Germany, the Else-Lasker-Schuler-Prize, to honor his entire Oeuvre. One Clear, Ice-cold January Morning at the Beginning of the 21st Century is his first novel, shortlisted for the Leipzig Bookfair Prize in 2016. His play Winter Solstice is on tour across the U.K. in 2018. He lives in Berlin.

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