Ben Fergusson Boeken

Tussen de ruïnes van het door de oorlog verwoeste Berlijn is Kasper Meiers grootste zorg overleven. Door te ruilen en te handelen op de zwarte markt probeert hij genoeg eten voor zichzelf en zijn oude vader bij elkaar te sprokkelen. Dan staat Eva opeens voor zijn deur. Ze vraagt om hulp bij de zoektocht naar een Britse soldaat die haar vriendin zwanger zou hebben gemaakt. Als Kasper zijn medewerking weigert, dreigt Eva al zijn geheimen te onthullen en sleurt ze hem mee in een sinistere klopjacht op de Britse soldaten.

A story of adoption, queer parenting and gender expectations around family roles.

In West Berlin in 1989, eighteen-year-old Ralf has just left school and is living a final golden summer with his three best friends. They spend their days swimming, smoking and daydreaming about the future, oblivious to the storm gathering on the other side of the Berlin Wall.But an unsettling discovery about his family and a meeting with the mysterious Oz shatters everything Ralf thought he knew about love and loyalty. And as old Cold War tensions begin to tear his life apart, he finds himself caught up in a web of deceit, forced to make impossible choices about his country, his family and his heart.

'A book to love and cherish' Deborah Levy, author of The Cost of Living 'A beautiful writer and, just as important, a beautiful thinker' Hanya Yanagihara, author of A Little Life 'Friendship is, in fact, as much the topic of this book as aloneness' Sarah Bakewell, Guardian At no time before have so many people lived alone, and never has loneliness been so widely or keenly felt. Why, in a society of individualists, is living alone perceived as a shameful failure? And can we ever be happy on our own? 'A heartfelt memoir on being single, living alone and the existential experience of loneliness' Financial Times 'Romantic love, suggests the author, is the lone "grand narrative" to have survived seismic societal shifts in modern times . . . Hermits and intimacy, the taboo of loneliness and the consolation of friendship - all find their place in a meditation that nods to joy and adversity' Observer

A fascinating look at racism and snobbery. Broken postwar Germany is superbly drawn and events in Africa are horrific The Times