A lonely taxidermist – a ghastly project – a ruthless hunt…
UNSTERBLICH
(Immortal)
by Michaela Kastel
Heyne/PRH Germany, April 2023
Taxidermist Sonja lives all on her own deep in the woods. She avoids all human contact like the plague, and the inhabitants of the nearby village are in any case convinced she’s a witch. Her clientele is mostly rather suspect, and many of the jobs they give her are unpleasant and illegal. When she meets a young man and feels herself falling for him, she decides to escape her hermit’s life. To do that, she first has to take on one last well-paid and very, very illegal job. But then long-buried trauma and family secrets raise their head – and soon she is not the only one who’s in mortal danger…
Michaela Kastel, born in 1987, has a degree from Vienna University, after which she spent many years working in a bookshop. In 2019, she became a full-time author. Her debut thriller So dunkel der Wald (‘The woods are dark and deep’) won the Viktor Crime Award, and she has been shortlisted for several other prizes.
A model Nazi mother who teaches others how to raise their children while refusing to speak of the great loss she has suffered; a cook travelling across Germany in the summer of 1945 who would rather make love to women than to her employer; a lawyer and single mother who unexpectedly inherits a flat in Wrocław and discovers a hitherto unknown Polish branch of her family – these women are all bound together by a century of war and post-war life, flight, expulsion and violence.
Munich, 1941. Students Hans and Alex don’t seem to have much in common – until, one day, they both duck out of military training to discuss art and literature instead of practice standing to attention. From that day on, they are close friends, and Hans is a welcome guest at Alex’s « discussion parties ». But war is their constant companion, and the urge to speak out against it grows ever stronger within both of them. Their plans are risky, especially when Hans’s younger sister, who mustn’t at any cost find out about their intentions – moves to Munich…
San Francisco. Robyn, a young and ambitious journalist, is shocked when the police show up on her doorstep. Her ex-boyfriend Julian has been reported missing. At a single stroke, the past comes flooding back: the longing, the pain, the disappointment… Robyn thought she had put it all behind her. She’s deeply worried about Julian. What could have happened? Robyn seeks help from her best friend, Cooper – though she has long felt much more for him than that. When the police suspect Cooper of having something to do with Julian’s disappearance, she doesn’t know what to believe, or what to feel. Who can she trust? Can she even trust herself?
Heniek and Andrzeij live in a small town in Poland. One is a mechanic, the other a carpenter, and both are about to retire. They have never had the urge to see the world, but one day they leave their home town of Gajerudki and head west down the A2, the « Motorway to Freedom ». They’re trying to track down Beatka, who has left Heniek after 36 years of marriage to start a new life in the Netherlands. They’ve taken the Mercedes they were meant to fix for a customer, and when they don’t have enough money to fill it with proper fuel, they use cooking oil instead. After an accident involving a herd of deer, the two friends continue their journey on foot. Along the way, they find out things they never knew about each other, including some dark secrets – and when they encounter a European bison, they face a reckoning with their past.