Stephan Lohse

»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...

Paul is arrested by police in a village in Northern Germany. He has beheaded seventeen chickens. Because he refuses to talk about the incident, he is taken to a psychiatric hospital, from where his younger brother Johann is supposed to pick him up – the two men haven’t seen each other in over twenty years. When Paul eventually asks his brother to accompany him on a trip, Johann...

Autumn, 1972. 8-year-old Jonas dies. His mother Ruth and his brother Benjamin try to carry on, each in their own way. Ruth decides to investigate Jonas’s death. She questions the lifeguard and his apprentice in the swimming pool where he died; in the hospital, she has them explain his death to her. She reads books, searching for a hidden meaning in all of this, and feeds an abandoned...