3.0
Empty Hearts
ByPublisher Description
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.
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.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communities17 Reviews
3.0
Queralt
Created 10 months agoShare
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“If you’re one of those readers who think books should be timeless pieces, Empty Hearts won’t be your book. This is a bit of a dystopian political thriller book set in Germany. It was published in 2017 and based on a bunch of what ifs: what if Trump was out of the picture, what if Brexit happened, what if Israel/Palestine made peace, what if Catalonia became a thing, what if France followed Brexit with Frexit… etc. Reading it now felt a bit funny and I read it for what it was, but it was more of a ‘going with the flow’ of things because you already know what happened after.
The story follows Britta, a mother, an entrepreneur, and a woman with a secret: her secret business (The Bridge) outfits and employs suicide bombers for terrorist organizations.
The concept intrigued me and I don’t think the execution was bad, but it’s a very time-sensitive book and it doesn’t hit the same in 2024. The book also felt very long, the characters weren’t very likeable, and it was very political in ways that were relevant but now they’re sort of redundant. I did find the AI thingy that evaluates the ‘suicidability’ of a person and the talk about gender and suicide bombers interesting, but it just got lost with all the drama in the book.
Maybe this was just not what I was looking for. The blurb promised a dystopia + political thriller, but it was mostly drama with a sprinkle of mental health.”
Jana Sczesny
Created about 2 years agoShare
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Alana Brandt
Created about 2 years agoShare
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“DNF 163/270Good concept but holy mother of God it's boring. Doesn't explain the political situation well at all and sort of brushes over the logistics on how this world got to that point. I don't know if it got lost in translation or what but nothing in this book compelled me to care for the characters wellbeing.”
Danielle Marics
Created almost 4 years agoShare
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About Juli Zeh
JULI ZEH's novels include Eagles and Angels, In Free Fall, and Decompression. She has worked at the United Nations in New York, taught at the German Institute for Literature in Leipzig, and currently lives in Brandenburg, where she is an honorary constitutional judge. She has been awarded numerous prizes for her work, including the German Book Prize, the Carl Amery Literature Prize, the Thomas Mann Prize, and the Hildegard von Bingen Award, and several of her novels have been adapted for film and television. In 2018, she was awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany for her outstanding contribution to literature.
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