A novel about living the life you want, inspired by the true story of trans woman Charlotte von Mahlsdorf.
ETWAS VERBORGEN SCHÖNES
(Hidden Beauty)
by Arne Jensen
Heyne/PRH Germany, December 2023
Uckermark, July 2018. On an old estate in the middle of nowhere, ninety-year-old Ottilie Rabe gathers her extended family around her to finalise her will. But when they come together, old wounds are opened. There is one thing from her past which Ottilie knows she must deal with – a terrible secret she has been hiding for decades, and which will change all their lives for ever.
Berlin, 1944. The body of a high-ranking Gestapo officer is found in a flat. He has been battered to death with a hammer. Investigating officer Werner Beltheim is under pressure to solve the case quickly. His prime suspect is the dead man’s daughter, who was found sitting next to the body. Her name is Ottilie Rabe…
Medic and therapist Arne Jensen has always been interested in modern German history and how it has affected the postwar generation. HIDDEN BEAUTY is partly about his specialist subject of how war trauma is passed down through families.
Muna is about to graduate from high school when she meets Magnus, a French teacher and photographer. She spends the night with him. When the Berlin Wall comes down, he disappears. Seven years later, they meet again – and become a couple. Muna thinks she has found the love of her life. But as soon as they take their first trip together, cracks start showing in their relationship. Over the years the coldness, unpredictability and violence get worse. But Muna isn’t willing to give up. 
Big changes happen when no one’s looking: this is Keller’s fearless and irresistibly original story about breaking boundaries and an imaginative revolution – a fierce yet tender novel about two women determined to start something new. But how?
In March 2023, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin. The charge: the abduction of Ukrainian children to Russia. The National Information Office of Ukraine lists over 16,000 very precisely recorded cases – the actual number is probably much higher. 
A daughter has disappeared. She has travelled to Syria to marry a jihadist she met online. Her father Murad blames himself. If he had only told Naima more about his old homeland, which he has left behind mentally, as well as physically; if only he had paid more attention to her feelings of alienation – perhaps then she wouldn’t have gone to a strange country in the name of religion. Murad knows he must find Naima. He contacts human traffickers and travels to the Kurdish territory on the Turkish-Syrian border, where he comes face to face with his past. When the traffickers play him an audio diary recorded by a woman in Raqqa – probably Naima – Murad sets out on a perilous journey into ISIS territory…