Eagles and Angels

Adler und Engel is in the form of a 21st century noir thriller with a background of drug-dealing and Balkan atrocities, the sort of book where everyone is so busy snorting coke that they have no time to drink whisky or cross their legs elegantly, and where you know from the start that all the good guys are going to turn out to be bad (but probably not vice-versa). Not really the sort of thing I enjoy, and I didn't, but it was sufficiently compelling and well-written to make me stick it out to the bitter end. And it is fairly bitter. Zeh slowly but surely takes away all the usual motivating forces that drive literary narrative: the main characters have no remaining interest in money, career, sex, or even normal human affection; good and show more evil are too murky for anyone to be motivated by them any more; even the ostensible death-wish of Max, the POV character, is not really credible, and all we are left with is the destructive, self-consuming force of narrative closure. As usual in such cases, the back-story is rather complex and largely hidden, but Zeh is much more interested in the process by which the characters create a narrative from the events than in the events themselves, and a lot is only very broadly sketched in. The real focus is on the interaction between Max the storyteller and Clara the listener, which becomes more warped and twisted in every chapter. Deeply strange, but interesting. show less

A very dark thriller kind of story. Max--a cocaine addicted international lawyer working for the UN is on the phone with his girlfriend Jessie when she blows her brains out. Jessie the daughter of an Austrian drug lord is terrified of her father and her brother who she has been stealing narcotics and money from. Max (who is left with their dog Jacques Chirac) confused and more and more depressed makes a decision to contact a radio talk show host Clara who agrees to listen to his story if he'll allow her to use it for her psychology dissertation. What follows at times in the rambling (in)coherent manner in which Max speaks about his past is the very dark and sordid story of top level European financing of drug trafficing most prominently show more and especially in the region of the former Yugoslavia via Serbian warlords including the real life Arkan--this wheeling and dealing concerning most directly Jessie's family, but not excluding state governments and International global institutions. After reading this one could rightly wonder whether Zeh (herself an international lawyer who has worked for the UN) is fictionalizing something more than hypothetical or not. In any case this book just oozes with gloom and menace. It is very well written and somewhat gothic in its atmosphere. The drug addled Max is riddled with guilt and violent regret and is himself on the road to self destruction to atone for his own sins while Europe and those institutions he used to work for sink deeper into corruption. A grim work but very well realized and worth reading. show less

This won the German Book Award for most successful debut novel; it is a little strange. The story moves around Max, his friend Jessie who shoots herself in the head while on the phone to Max, Carla who is a radio personality working on a degree in psychology and interested in Max’s weird life story, and various shadowy figures (including Jessie’s father and brother) engaged in massive drug trafficking from the Balkans, and then Poland into the EU, particularly as the expansion of the EU border provides all sorts of new opportunities for crime. Oddly, there are also a few references, without any appearance, to a real person: Louise Arbour, A Canadian jurist prominently involved in prosecuting war crimes arising out of the Balkan wars show more in the late 90s. Max is a successful international lawyer, but he is also a cokehead and the stories of his relationships with Jessie in the past and with Carla in the present, the two constantly crossing and connecting, are told through his drug-induced prism. There is murder (maybe), mayhem and mystery, though at times we are not sure what is real and what is Max’s paranoia or drug-induced fantasies. It takes a while for the story to start to come together and it is not resolved until the end, so the book requires some perseverance from the reader. In fact, at 329 pages, I thought this book could have been a hundred pages shorter without losing anything and, in fact, probably enhancing its impact.

Zeh presents an unbelievably bleak view on life and society, so to describe this as noir is to seriously underestimate its colouring. There are no redeeming characters, only shades of grey and malice. And even the principal characters: Max, Jessie, Clara are not very sympathetic. In fact, I didn’t particularly care what happened to any of them. It is hard to be sympathetic to people who are this self-absorbed and who through malice or ignorance or stupidity get involved, however tangentially, in some horrible abuses of war crimes, trafficking in people, and the drug trade.

Zeh’s writing style is interesting: very clipped, very direct, short declaratory sentences that reflect the bleak mood and landscapes. She also has an original and inventive way with metaphors . On balance: interesting if you persevere and get to the end, but not a book I would recommend to a lot of people. show less

Was für eine chaotische Geschichte, die da aus einer Teenagerliebe erwächst. Es geht um Drogenhandel und -schmuggel, geschickt vermischt mit den Kriegswirren auf dem Balkan und der danach folgenden Osterweiterung - das sind die unschönen Beigaben einer Liebesgeschichte die keine ist. Max ist verliebt in Jessy, die aber in Scherscha - der wiederum nur an viel Geld interessiert ist, an das er über Jessy heranzukommen glaubt, deren Vater ein Drogenhändlier im großen Stil ist. Max zieht sich zurück, wird ein erfolgreicher Anwalt im Völkerrecht und begegnet Jessy wieder. Das Verhängnis nimmt seinen Lauf, als sich der Kontakt zu seiner alten Liebe intensiviert...
Grundsätzlich keine schlechte Geschichte, wie hier das Grauen des show more Drogenhandels wie auch des Balkankrieges einem vor Augen geführt wird wie auf übelste Weise beides zusammengeführt wird. Doch irgendwie empfand ich die Art in der Alles zusammenhing, ziemlich konstruiert. Nichts, aber auch überhaupt nichts wurde hier dem Zufall überlassen, alles war geplant und von bösen Hintermännern in die Wege geleitet worden. Es löst sich am Ende (wenn auch nicht in Wohlgefallen) zwar alles auf und die Zusammenhänge sind klar erkennbar, doch etwas weniger Konstruktion hätte für meinen Geschmack dem Roman sehr gut getan. So bleibt es im Rückblick für mich eine recht chaotische Geschichte mit noch chaotischeren Hauptfiguren.
Sehr gut gefallen hat mir aber Anna Thalbach als Vorleserin, die Jessy für mich überdeutlich darstellte mit ihrer feinen, manchmal leicht abwesend klingenden Stimme. Auch der Part von Max gefiel mir - recht neutral, schwer zu entscheiden ob Mann oder Frau, genau richtig für diese Figur.
Alles in allem also ok - wenn man Anna Thalbach mag ;-) show less

Keine Anführungszeichen bei Dialogen geht nicht. Das ist einfach viel zu anstrengend zu lesen. Mein fünftes Buch von ihr. Die anderen 4 haben alle 4-5 Sterne bekommen.

Overroepen. Nutteloos ingewikkeld verhaal. Een ware marteling om tot het einde door te lezen!
Geef mij maar Unterleuten en Nullzeit!

qualvolles lesen, zeh, könnte ich fast sagen, und das nicht zu ende. manchmal muss man auch aufgeben...