The People Before Us

The island of Strand in the Wadden Sea off northernmost tip of Germany: Marlene has just finished university and started working in a shop in a historical village where everything is just the way it was at the turn of the twentieth century – the customs, the tradespeople, the clothing. One great big theatre set maintained by a cast of seasonal workers who live in simple barracks situated beyond the “costume border”. Soon enough, Marlene meets Janne, a local, and she feels unusually drawn to her. But it is not just her feelings for Janne that seem to change Marlene’s perception of the world, the island itself has shifted something within her. Out on the mudflats, the vestiges of the submerged town of Rungholt are a constant reminder of the calamity that rising sea levels threaten to usher in. But the closer she and Janne grow, the more strongly Marlene senses that Janne has a secret that stretches way back into the island’s past. And Janne’s not the only one. Time and again, Marlene notices strange occurrences, and eventually she beings to uncover a connection.

The People Before Us tells of preserving old customs and disappearing worlds, of saying goodbye and making new beginnings, of falling in love and trying to find your place in the world. Funny, clever, and with a lot of heart.

»A tender and sinister novel about being young, about our fascination with things past, and about our helplessness when history finally catches up with us.« Antje Rávik Strubel

»The new novel by Kristin Höller is a journey into the past in two senses: not only does her protagonist Marlene travel back in time – we readers also get to discover a long-gone world.« Christoph Amend, DIE ZEIT

»This fantastic book is a poetic intervention against the excessively concrete, instead setting off on a search for the unfathomable.« Jan Drees, Deutschlandfunk Büchermarkt

»The major and minor characters, with their loves, their worries and desires, are captivating … And the historical village that Höller invents is a brilliant narrative idea in its own right – with supermarket veggies stuffed in wicker baskets, hidden light switches, and employees sneaking out into the ›historical‹ courtyard for a cigarette, it is packed with humorous and absurd stories.« Sabine Rohlf, Berliner Zeitung

»In her multilayered narrative, [Höller] effortlessly weaves together the diffuse personal crises of her protagonists with the fate of a landscape and its inhabitants.« Fridtjof Küchemann, FAZ

»In her novel The People Before Us, Kristin Höller grafts together a queer love story with magic and the spine-chilling menace of climate change … Höller masters all these genres and does so with enviable finesse.« Thomas Studer, ZEIT ONLINE