At the age of fourteen, a boy flees from the southern German village of Heiligsheim. Forty years later, he returns under the name of Ludwig »Luggi« Dragomir. The tough times he has had to live through since leaving his native village are not enough to prevent the constant reliving of something even more sinister: the abuse perpetrated on him and his childhood friends by some of the most influential people of Heiligsheim.
Since his return to the village, several...
At the age of fourteen, a boy flees from the southern German village of Heiligsheim. Forty years later, he returns under the name of Ludwig »Luggi« Dragomir. The tough times he has had to live through since leaving his native village are not enough to prevent the constant reliving of something even more sinister: the abuse perpetrated on him and his childhood friends by some of the most influential people of Heiligsheim.
Since his return to the village, several elderly men have gone missing – a few of them are found dead. Death by accident or murder, that’s what police inspector Anna Darko is trying to find out. Over the course of her investigation, Ludwig becomes a suspect, as he is having an affair with the wife of one of the missing men – a man that he is holding captive and torturing in his home… Because fury has gained the upper hand within Ludwig Dragomir, and now »it was allowed to burn«: »And so there I stood, at the edge of the night, born for murder, ready to die, and didn’t die and murdered nowhere near enough.«
What causes victims to turn into perpetrators and the way this relentless process going beyond the boundaries of cruelty unfolds – this is what Friedrich Ani, master of Noir, unveils in his characteristic style that has no equal: empathetic, surprising and down to the minutest of details.
»a fantastic novel about victims, guilt and delusion.« Tobias Gohlis, DIE ZEIT
»Naked Man Burning is not for the faint of heart. But it’s an important and a necessary book that looks steadfast into human abysses.« Manfred Papst, NZZ am Sonntag
»You have to read it, this book.« Elmar Krekeler, DIE WELT
»Ani doesn’t accuse, he refrains from any kind of search for righteousness or justice, he presents nice next-door neighbours that have monsters hiding inside them. A nightmare come to life, unsparing and gripping in its sombre tone.« Kleine Zeitung
»Naked Man Burning is probably the most unusual crime novel that Ani has published so far. However, his excursion into hardboiled literature is not a mere practice piece, but a fantastic, sinister crime novel about vengeance of Biblical dimensions.« Volker Isfort, Abendzeitung München
»Ani builds sentences as precisely as a surgeon. There’s probably no one else who writes texts this somber, on such a high linguistic level.« Emder Zeitung
»Ani writes German Noir. Straightforward and gripping.« Christian Mückl, Nürnberger Zeitung
»Ani doesn’t write down gruesome details, those develop in our head. He doesn’t speculate, doesn’t write for mere tension’s sake but still manages to draw out the arc of suspense to the extreme.« Ditta Rudle, tanzschrift.at August 2016
»a fantastic novel about victims, guilt and delusion.« Tobias Gohlis, DIE ZEIT
»Naked Man Burning is not for the faint of heart. But it’s an important and a necessary book that looks steadfast into human abysses.« Manfred Papst, NZZ am Sonntag
»You have to read it, this book.« Elmar Krekeler, DIE WELT
»Ani doesn’t accuse, he refrains from any kind of search for righteousness or justice, he presents nice next-door neighbours...
Friedrich Ani was born in 1959. His first novel was published in 1996, and since then he has gone on to write crime novels, poetry and YA-fiction, as well as writing for TV, radio and theatre. He is an award-winning script writer, while his books have also received many prominent awards. So far, he is the only author ever to receive the German Crime Fiction Prize for three titles in the same year (2003).
Friedrich Ani was born in 1959. His first novel was published in 1996, and since then he has gone on to write crime novels, poetry and YA-fiction,...
A narrator, possibly a former monk, looks back on his life: there wasn’t any real space for childhood and youth in it, his father and mother did not play the role intended for them. His path led him from faith to doubt, from the village to the city. He escaped the city into the solitude of his hermitage, where he tries to put into words what leaves him bewildered, investigates the...
Police officer Kay Oleander was hit in the face with a beer bottle during a demonstration and lost his left eye as a result. Released from active duty, he struggles to get through the day – until fate leads him to Silvia Glaser. She, too, has been disabled ever since a bicycle accident. Unexpectedly, the two find support in each other – despite the fact that she is suspected of...
Seventeen-year-old Finja Madsen fails to come home after a party one night. There are no witnesses, no clues as to what happened to her. The investigation is at a dead end. Inspector Fariza Nasri interviews family and friends of the missing girl, including her mother’s boyfriend Stephan Barig. The party was at his house while he spent the weekend in the countryside with two friends. Barig...
In Friedrich Ani’s new novel, »the four« must spring into action: Polonius Fischer (the former monk), Tabor Süden (the returned missing person’s investigator), Jakob Franck (the former inspector, now retired, but still the deliverer of the worst news) and Fariza Nasri (the detective with Syrian roots, saved from her banishment to the provinces). All of them must...
Tabor SĂĽden started out as a policeman before moving into private detective work, becoming an experienced specialist in missing persons cases. What he really wanted was to walk away forever from investigative work after the last case in which one of his colleagues lost his life.
SĂĽden plans to leave Munich with no goodbyes. However, when his boss catches him at the railway station,...
Happiness is extinguished completely when 11-year-old Lennard Grabbe doesn’t come home one night during the cold November days in Munich. 34 days later, he is found the victim of a murderer....
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Domestic Rights Sales: German Audiobook (Hörbuch Hamburg), German Radio Drama (Deutschlandfunk Kultur)
Poetry owes many evergreens to »occasional poems«. In the case of Friedrich Ani, such poems constitute deliberate addressing, musically worded compositions if one considers current political-individual situations the occasion to which one must react immediately, showing oneself and the counterpart in all its vulnerability. These realistic-spontaneous sounds find very different forms: from the...
English world rights (Seagull), Italy (Emons), Greece (Gutenberg)
Domestic Rights Sales: German Audiobook (Hörbuch Hamburg), German Entire Radio Readings (HR and BR)
Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Spanish world rights (Plataforma)
Previously published in the respective language / territory; rights available again: Spanish world rights (Plataforma)