The Spiegel editor-in-chief Dirk Kurbjuweit With his 1990s novel from the Frankfurt financial world, he kicks off the 16th Reading Festival “Frankfurt reads a book” 2025. “Aftershocks” (Penguin) draws a literary chronicle of the 1990s and German monetary history: Old Luis is passionate about researching earthquakes. He spends the whole day at the seismograph of the earthquake observatory on the Kleiner Feldberg in the Taunus Mountains, evaluating the data. His only neighbors are the administrator couple Konrad and Charlotte. Luis has a close friendship with their son Lorenz, a young banker from Frankfurt. When a frightened young woman calls the station after an earthquake in the Rhineland and asks Lorenz for help, he falls in love with her voice. He drives to her that same night and meets his future wife. Selma and Lorenz move to Kronberg together. They plan a brilliant life in the suburbs of Frankfurt and Lorenz’s career at the Bundesbank. In reality, a web of lies, secrets, missteps and decisions leads to a remarkable decline. When Lorenz finally loses his job as a result of the introduction of the euro, Luis hopes that Lorenz will return to the Feldberg. But it is only the sudden, mysterious death of Konrad and Charlotte that clears the way for this.
Dirk Kurbjuweit was born in Wiesbaden in 1962. Known to a wide readership as a reporter for the Zeit and Spiegel newspapers, he impressed a wide readership early on as a storyteller. After his debut “The Loneliness of the Crocodiles” (1995), the novella “Two without“ (2001) and the novel “Fear“ (2013) was critically acclaimed. Most recently, the novel “Haarmann” (2020) and the story “Der Ausflug“ (2022) received widespread press coverage. Several of his literary successes served as the basis for film adaptations, plays and radio plays.
An information evening for interested organizers will take place on Tuesday, September 17, 2024 at 8 p.m. in the Frankfurt City Library. Registration: info@frankfurt-liest-ein-buch.de
