Twins

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by Dirk Kurbjuweit


  I soon made it up with Vera, but I don’t think I ever entirely forgave her for her suspicions of Ludwig. At any rate, we were no longer happy together. Six months later, she decided to continue her studies in the States. I didn’t go with her. We wrote a few times, but then we lost touch, until she rang two weeks ago to announce her visit. I’m really looking forward to it.

  There’s a new cafe on the river these days—River Cafe, it’s called. I think I’ll go there with her. If the weather’s fine, we could even have a swim. They say the water’s been open to swimmers again since last year.

  DIRK KURBJUWEIT is deputy editor-in-chief at Der Spiegel and divides his time between Berlin and Hamburg. He has received numerous awards for his writing, including the Egon Erwin Kisch Prize for journalism, and is the author of eight critically acclaimed novels, many of which have been adapted for film, television and radio in Germany. Fear and Twins are the first of his works to be translated into English.

  IMOGEN TAYLOR is a literary translator based in Berlin. Her translations include Fear, also by Dirk Kurbjuweit, Sascha Arango’s The Truth and Other Lies and Melanie Raabe’s The Trap and The Stranger.

  PRAISE FOR DIRK KURBJUWEIT AND FEAR

  ‘Fear shifts our moral codes. It makes us

  sympathetic to violent revenge, accessories

  to murder. Do we want the victim to survive?

  No, we don’t. Long after I had put this book

  down I still didn’t. A great achievement.’

  Herman Koch, bestselling author of The Dinner

  ‘A smart, psychologically complex and morally acute

  fable of modern German society decked out in the

  garb of an intricate thriller.’ Sydney Morning Herald

  ‘An unnerving portrait of how close many

  of us can come to committing unspeakable

  acts of violence—often motivated by a fear

  of violence itself.’ Lifted Brow

  ‘Dirk Kurbjuweit exposes the evil lurking just

  below the surface of civilised life.’ Stern

  ‘Gripping, suspenseful and unbelievably dark…

  As a thriller, Fear more than holds its own

  against the competition.’ Die Welt

  ‘High-voltage and multi-layered.’

  Frankfurter Neue Presse

  ‘A subtle and engrossing psychological thriller that

  gives an intelligent, carefully considered response

  to the question of how much our liberal values are

  worth when we feel our lives are threatened.’ Brigitte

  textpublishing.com.au

  The Text Publishing Company

  Swann House

  22 William Street

  Melbourne Victoria 3000

  Australia

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © Carl Hanser Verlag, München, 2001

  Translation copyright © Imogen Taylor, 2017

  The moral rights of Dirk Kurbjuweit to be identified as the author and Imogen Taylor as the translator of this work have been asserted.

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright above, no part of this publication shall be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

  Originally published in Germany under the title Zweier ohne by Nagel & Kimche im Carl

  Hanser Verlag, München, 2001

  Published in Australia and New Zealand by The Text Publishing Company, 2017

  Cover design by Design by Committee

  Cover image by Cultura RM Exclusive/Atli Mar Hafsteinsson/Getty Images

  Page design by Imogen Stubbs

  Typeset by J&M Typesetting

  National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry

  Creator: Kurbjuweit, Dirk, 1962– author.

  Title: Twins/by Dirk Kurbjuweit; translated from the German by Imogen Taylor.

  ISBN: 9781925603033 (paperback)

  ISBN: 9781925410709 (ebook)

  Subjects: German fiction—Translations into English.

  Other Creators/Contributors: Taylor, Imogen (Translator), translator.

 

 

 


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