Book
Empty hearts : a novel
Call Number
- THRILLER ZEH (OSH)
Edition
First American edition.
Publication Information
New York : Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, [2019]
Physical Description
270 pages ; 22 cm
Uniform Title
Summary
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, 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 almost 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 and a colleague at the clinic murdered, driving Britta, Babak, and their latest recruit into hiding. On their heels is a new terrorist organization called Empty Hearts, a group unlike any they've encountered before.
Notes
"Originally published in Germany as Leere Herzen by Luchterhand Literaturverlag, a division of Verlagsgruppe Random House GmbH, Munich, in 2017"--Title page verso.