Peter needs Hannah. Who sighs every night when she heads home. The home, which is a room in Croyden rented from an Indian family, where Peter waits at the window and always starts to cry when Hannah arrives with food and then sits in the room with Peter as he stares at her and always wants to touch her. Hannah would like to do normal youthful things. Go to VR rooms, sit in cafés, go with other young people to concerts, but not with Peter.

It’s not raining.

The four sit at the table.

And suddenly there’s music.

The four, so happy to have a reason to move, go outside. A new grime star is shooting a video outside. An old Stormzy track, remixed.

Oh, let’s make this last forever

Forever, yeah

Forever

Forever

Oh, let’s make this last forever

Yeah, forever, oh

Forever

Forever

Hannah, Peter, Karen, and Don stand close together.

A nearly perfect moment.

In a wonderful, peaceful world.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book would not have come into being without my ingenuity and the help of the following people, whom I gratefully thank. They’re good people! I may have forgotten a Dr. or Professor title here or there, but let’s not dwell on it.

TRANSLATION

Tim Mohr

NERD CHECK

Dr. Lorenz Adlung

Hernâni Marques

PEOPLE CHECK

Kevin Reilly

INSPIRATION, ADVICE, WISDOM

Tom Bielefeld

Volker Birk

Dr. Thomas Bruhn

CCC

Graham Cooper

and his

colleagues

(Humphrey Booth Learning Center)

Annette Dittert

Ertu Eren

Dr. Jens Foell

Robin Garcia

Rabea Gorney

Prof. Wilhelm Heitmeyer

Prof. Dirk Helbing

Sissi Lichtenstein

Professor Achille Mbembe

Tracey Miller

Prof. Jürgen Schmidhuber

TRoadz

Prof. Stieglitz

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sibylle Berg is a Swiss-German author and playwright, and one of the most celebrated contemporary writers in the German-speaking world. Born in Weimar, Germany, they have written twenty-seven plays, fifteen novels, and numerous anthologies and radio plays. Their work has been translated into thirty-four languages. Berg is part of the straight edge movement and identifies as nonbinary. The German-language edition of Grime won the Swiss Book Prize. In 2020, Berg received Switzerland’s highest literary award, the Grand Prix Literature, for their work. They live in Zurich. You can sign up for email updates here.

Tim Mohr’s translations include Alex Beer’s The Second Rider and all five novels to appear in English by Alina Bronsky. He collaborated with Guns N’ Roses bassist Duff McKagan on It’s So Easy (and other lies), and edited Gil Scott-Heron’s posthumous memoir, The Last Holiday. Burning Down the Haus, Mohr’s narrative history of East German punk rock and the role the movement played in bringing down the Berlin Wall, was named a Book of the Year by Rolling Stone, Rough Trade, NPR, and the Chicago Public Library.

Newsletter Sign-up

Thank you for buying this

St. Martin’s Publishing Group ebook.

To receive special offers, bonus content,

and info on new releases and other great reads,