The Humming Underneath the Skin

»Axel has been missing for three days. I subtract the hours that have passed without him here from the eighty hours that I have known him. Twenty-six hours are left. In little more than a day it’ll be like I never knew Axel Peschke.«

Hamburg, 1977. Julle is fourteen. Shortly before the summer break, a new student, Axel, joins his class. Julle falls in love immediately. No one knows that he is gay. Except for his sister and maybe his mother. Mothers tend to have a sense for these things, after all. Julle counts the hours that he has known Axel and befriends him. Together, they go to the public pool, feed Axel’s rabbits, and discover a hidden, partially burned-down hut in the forest. Just as they get close to uncovering its secret, Axel suddenly moves away – and Julle has a hunch that after this summer, nothing will be like it was before.

With great imagination, empathy, and wit, Stephan Lohse tells the story of two boys and the things in life that mean everything. The Humming Underneath the Skin is a novel about love and friendship, about growing up in the seventies – a past as it perhaps never was, but should have been.

»Stephan Lohse’s little novel The Humming Underneath the Skin is perfect in its own way. It manages to do exactly what it wants to. It is not some mighty, demanding masterpiece that explodes the language, rather, it tells a simple story in a simple way. But in this, it is indeed masterful. You get a sense of the impressive skill of this author when you consider all that he had to leave out to achieve his goal, how beautifully he narrates and writes through his precision and restraint.« Gustav Seibt, Süddeutsche Zeitung

»[Lohse] impresses [readers] with a sense for language that captures the vibrations that pass between people, that connects and separates the days in their moods.« Cornelia Geissler, Berliner Zeitung

»Stephan Lohse’s third novel is his best yet.« Thomas Andre, Hamburger Abendblatt

»A book for the summer about that first great love from which one never fully recovers.« Lenore Lötsch, NDR Kultur

»This is a calm book that is told with great empathy and authenticity. Truly beautiful.« WDR 2