Empty Hearts
A Novel
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- ¥880
発行者による作品情報
A prescient political and psychological thriller ripped from tomorrow's headlines, by one of Germany's most celebrated contemporary novelists
A few short years from now, the world is an even more uncertain place than it is today, and politics everywhere is marching rightward: Trump is gone, but Brexit is complete, as is Frexit. There's a global financial crisis, armed conflict, and mass migration, and an ultrapopulist movement governs in Germany. With their democracy facing the wrecking ball, most well-off Germans turn inward, focusing on their own lives. Britta, a wife, mother, and successful businesswoman, ignores the daily news and concentrates on her family and her work running a clinic specializing in suicide prevention.
But her legitimate business is connected to a secret and far more lucrative operation known as The Bridge, an outfit that supplies terrorist organizations looking to employ suicide bombers. Using a complex candidate-identifying algorithm designed by Babak, a brilliant programmer and Britta's only employee, The Bridge has effectively cornered the market, and terrorism never takes place without Britta's services—which is why news of a thwarted suicide attack in Leipzig comes as a shock. Then The Bridge's database is stolen, driving Britta, Babak, and their latest recruit into hiding. On their heels is a new terrorist organization called the Empty Hearts, a group unlike any Britta and Babak have encountered before.
Part suspenseful thriller, part wickedly effective social satire, Empty Hearts is a novel for our times, examining urgent questions of morality, politics, and culture and presenting a startling vision of a future where empathy is a thing of the past.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this intriguing near-future dystopian thriller from Zeh (Compression), Germany, now ruled by populists, has implemented massive budget cuts; France has left the EU; and there's a global financial crisis. Britta S ldner has come up with an innovative algorithm to capitalize on the increased depression these events have caused: Lassie, which uses data mining to search the internet for people considering suicide. She invites those identified as candidates to her business, the Bridge, which ostensibly provides "healing therapy for suicide prevention." Most are dissuaded from self-harm, and Britta links the others with organizations looking to deploy them in suicide missions for a fee paid to the Bridge and the participants' survivors. After a failed terror attack on an airport, carried out by would-be suicide bombers who weren't identified by the never-wrong Lassie, Britta fears a rival entity might be responsible. Britta's search for an explanation will keep readers turning the pages. Not every detail rings true, but Zeh makes it easy to suspend disbelief in this cold-blooded and macabre future.
