Empty Hearts, Hardcover

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, 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 almost 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 and a colleague at the clinic murdered, driving Britta, Babak, and their latest recruit into hiding. On their heels is a new terrorist organization called Empty Hearts, a group unlike any they've 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.

JULI ZEH's novels include Eagles and Angels, winner of numerous prizes including the German Book Prize; In Free Fall; and Decompression. She has worked at the United Nations in New York, taught at the German Institute for Literature in Leipzig, and currently lives in Brandenburg. She has been awarded numerous prizes for her work, including the Carl Amery Literature Prize, the Thomas Mann Prize, and the Hildegard von Bingen Award.