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 employ their unique methods to solve the murder of a woman and the beating death of a police officer,...
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 employ their unique methods to solve the murder of a woman and the beating death of a police officer, incidents which receive great attention after igniting social and political debates (coming from the right) about the incompetence of the police, migrant children, east and west Germany, and »the system«.
And that is why in their fight to find the culprit »the four« must struggle with possible clues and witnesses who claim not to have seen anything, look for missing persons who could, in theory, help solve the crime and constantly deal with fake confessions. In the meantime, they are unable to prevent copycat crimes – until the various investigative methods of »the four« make chance discovery a necessity.
In his new mystery, Friedrich Ani beats a path through the thicket of our political and individual dispositions. In so doing allows a view from the edge of the abyss into the indescribable. After All The Empty Rooms we must learn to look at literature, crime literature, writing about true and false, evil and (the ever unreachable) good, life and death, anew.
»With his novels that grab the reader not by means of inflated action but through subtle psychological portraits and a painfully warm melancholy, Ani is one of the giants of the whole genre of contemporary crime fiction.« Nürnberger Nachrichten
»Friedrich Ani writes with clockwork precision, in his unique, unconventional tone, sleek and sharp and still rich in atmosphere.« Sylvia Staude, Frankfurter Rundschau
»Ani has named his powerful and complex new novel All the Empty Rooms [...] One can also read it as an antidote to indifference.« Antje Weber, Süddeutsche Zeitung
»Ani has choreographed a ballet of touch.« Elmar Krekeler, Die Welt
»Ani’s novel makes clear just how important it is to preserve or even recover dignity and poise in times when dignity and poise are sorely lacking.« Marcus Müntefering, Spiegel Online
»Rather superb crime-literature.« stern
»[Certain] details and milieus can only be found in Ani’s books, books in which it is not the plot, but the detours and side routes that are important.« Peter Körte, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
»The way [Ani] lets his various investigators from dozens of stories meet in this novel is a true dramatic and choreographic coup. And the spectacularly stages story […] is in no way inferior to that: Told incredibly complex from alternating perspectives; a plot with multiple narrative threads that still adds up to the smallest detail and remains surprising until the very end.« Ulrich Noller, Deutschlandfunk
»Friedrich Ani is a master at controlling the reins of the story line.« Sonja Hartl, Deutschlandfunk Kultur
»... an enjoyable read.« Jürgen Kanold, Südwest Presse
»Once more, Ani tells a dramatically coherent, suspenseful and movingly sombre story.« Andrea Gerk, MDR
»Crime-Poetry!« Angela Wittmann, Brigitte
»A gripping and deeply humanist book.« Iris Hetscher, Weser-Kurier
»Ani‘s new crime novel is brilliant.« Elmar Ries, Westfälische Nachrichten
»Friedrich Ani masterfully connects the different plot lines into a pattern. He shows the portrait of a society on the edge.« Ellen Beeflink, unsere zeit
»The psychological deficits of the perpetrators, suspects and the investigators illustrate how All the Empty Rooms assesses the societal changes towards a greater human coldness in a literary way. A complex tableau in which men may determine the plot but cut a horrifying picture.« Klenkes
»With his novels that grab the reader not by means of inflated action but through subtle psychological portraits and a painfully warm melancholy, Ani is one of the giants of the whole genre of contemporary crime fiction.« Nürnberger Nachrichten
»Friedrich Ani writes with clockwork precision, in his unique, unconventional tone, sleek and sharp and still rich in atmosphere.« Sylvia Staude, Frankfurter Rundschau
»Ani has...
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...
Tabor Süden 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.
Süden 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...
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...
Domestic Rights Sales: German Audiobook (Hörbuch Hamburg)
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)