Book cover for Liminal by Roland Schimmelpfennig
2023 Released
192 Pages
2-3 Hours
Audiobook Unavailable
Hardback Unavailable
MacLehose PressISBN 9781529418705
Translated by Jamie Bulloch

A thrilling, filmic immersion into Berlin's legendary club scene - a skillfully told novel about the fragility of life.

Berlin, Görlitzer Park: The body of a young woman in a white wedding dress floats in the canal. Who is she, and where does she come from? Suspended drugs investigator Tommy trawls Berlin's clubs and criminal clans to uncover the woman's story.

On his odyssey through the city, he meets survivors and fighters, the lost and stranded from all over the world: from the Japanese tattoo master to the Indian fire-eater. Wide awake and dead tired, suspended between a dreamscape and reality, Tommy dives deeper and deeper into the Berlin underworld and into his own past.
A breathless noir novel that is as hard-hitting as it is emotional, exploring the fragility of life and our longing for community.

PRAISE FOR One Clear, Ice-cold Morning at the Beginning of the Twenty-first Century

"A highly original and often hypnotic work . . . exactly the type of book that readers in search of striking European voices should embrace" John Boyne (author of THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PYJAMAS), Irish Times

"A brilliantly kaleidoscopic morality tale"- Eileen Battersby, Financial Times

"A magnificent achievement, a novel of terrific originality" - Charlie Connelly, New European

"The exhilarating narrative is wonderfully concise, and the imagery is intensely cinematic" - Barry Forshaw, Guardian

Translated from the German by Jamie Bulloch

Roland Schimmelpfennig

Award-winning playwright Roland Schimmelpfennig is one of the most exciting voices in European drama. He has worked as a journalist, translator and dramaturg, and his plays have been successfully produced in over forty countries. The Golden Dragon was the German critics’ Play of the Year in 2010 and is published by Oberon Books. Oberon also publishes Schimmelpfennig’s Arabian Night and The Woman Before, while his other works include Push Up 1 – 3, The Child Who Could Fly, Here I Am and Winter Solstice.

More by Roland Schimmelpfennig

Jamie Bulloch

Translated by

Jamie Bulloch has translated almost fifty books from German, including works by Timur Vermes, Robert Menasse, Sebastian Fitzek and Daniela Krien. His translation of Birgit Vanderbeke’s The Mussel Feast won the 2014 Schlegel-Tieck Prize, an award for which he has been runner-up on two further occasions. He is also the author of Karl Renner: Austria. Jamie lives in London with his wife and three daughters.

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