Wulf Dorn’s psyco-thrillers have been translated into French, Italian and Spanish amongst others but as yet not into English.
This is a thriller whose dénouement is explained by one of its protagonists as a quote from Nietzsche “Normally he said I like so start my lectures with a quote, the words of Nietzsche Seem to me in this instance to be quite appropriate ‘history belongs to the living in three ways: it belongs to him because he is active and has ambition; because he preserves and he worships; because he suffers and needs release’.”***
1985: – Jan Forstner, 12 years old, witnesses the drowning of his 18 year old neighbour Alexandra who, scantily dressed and full of fear whilst escaping from the psychiatric clinic near his home in Fahlenberg falls through the thin ice covering the lake near his home.
Two days later, late at night, Jan slips out of his house with a tape recorder to try to capture the sound of the spirit of Alexandra, he is followed and then accompanied by his younger brother Sven. As Jan is caught short and needs to pee behind a tree his brother is abducted. The next day without explanation his father leaves the house in his car and dies in an accident. Jan is then sent away to study in a boarding school.
So begins this book!
2010: – Jan now a psychiatrist like his father returns to Fahlenberg for the first time in 20 tears to accept a position in the clinic where his father worked and Alexandra had been interned.
Dorn then leads us through this thriller as Jan, never completely recovered from his brother’s disappearance for which he feels guilty, seeks the answer to his hidden demons, against the background of numerous deaths from suicide in Fahlenberg. (It would seem an advantage not to know Jan!).
You will quickly guess that Jan is ‘he who suffers and needs release’, but who is ‘he who preserves and worships’
Wulf deserves a translation into English.
First published in German as Kalte Stille by Bertelsmann in 2010
Translated into French by Joel Falcoz as Nos Désirs et Nos Peurs and published by Cherche Midi in 2014
*** my translation
South of Paris books 