Asa

Asa is the long-awaited new thriller by bestselling author Zoran Drvenkar. A brutal family epic spanning more than a hundred years with stops in Norway, Venice, Cape Verde, and rural Germany, Asa revolves around the Kolbert family. Scarred by experiences of war and senseless violence, the Kolberts found the village of Thule, where survival is a ruthless game of cat and mouse and violence is a way of life.
In Thule, a desire to prepare the next generation for the demands of a cruel and fickle world degenerates into a ritual that becomes known as the “test”. Children are pitted against each other in a massive hunt, and only the strongest survive. When Asa and her father try to put a stop to this madness, they run afoul of their own family, who tries to have them killed. Only Asa survives. 

Years later, after having been exiled from Thule and losing so much to this ritual, Asa returns to gain her revenge. To do so, she has to face off against her greatest enemy: her own family.

What ensues is a big, sprawling thriller about revenge, survival, trauma, betrayal, and love, told with great suspense, unexpected twists, and a pinch of dark humour.

»Asa is a frighteningly relevant novel for today's world, one of the major thrillers of the year.« Katrin Doerksen, Deutschlandfunk Kultur

»In his ambitious thriller, Zoran Drvenkar shows how violence only ever begets more violence. It can be read as a commentary on the current state of the world.« Die Presse am Sonntag

»Highly complex, dense, and utterly compelling.« WDR 2

»A candidate for the most disturbing thriller of the year. « Ingeborg Sperl, Der Standard

»Zoran Drvenkar is an outstanding writer of thrillers. Asa is incredibly well put together, brilliantly dramatized, the setting is superb, the way this novel is crafted is just first class. You can't help but be amazed as you read it.« Ulrich Noller, WDR 1

»Asa is a revenge story, a dark German family novel, and a frighteningly relevant literary study of the genealogy of violence. ... [One] of this year's major thrillers.« Katrin Doerksen, Deutschlandfunk

»The Hunger Games in the East German province: a cruel initiation ritual in which teenagers lose their lives. Years later, Asa Kolbert seeks revenge on her family – in a sprawling thriller that delves deep into Germany's history of violence. Epic, harrowing, brilliant: Zoran Drvenkar is back!« Jury of the Crime Fiction Best List

»Highly complex, dense, and utterly compelling.« WDR 2

»A colossal thriller ... a massive epic ... Almost seven hundred pages, and it never gets boring ... I know of nothing comparable in German-language crime fiction. It's a story that hits you with full force ... It's just so damn good.« Hanspeter Eggenberger, krimikritik.com

»[A] contender for the most disturbing thriller of the year.« Ingeborg Sperl, Der Standard

»With precise language, he dissects every detail of this unpredictable story – leaving the reader wide-eyed and with goosebumps.« Mike Altwicker, WDR

»Asa is a thriller and family saga, historical novel and social critique, a powerful story told from different perspectives about love and violence, friendship and betrayal... an eloquent thriller.« Uwe Sauerwein, Berliner Morgenpost