"A captivating historical novel brimming with atmosphere and mystery." —Passauer Neue Presse
Carlos Ruiz Zafón meets Kate Morton in this sweeping literary mystery where books guard secrets and the past refuses to stay buried.
St. Petersburg, 1917. Young librarian Artur Schneider flees the revolution, carrying with him a manuscript that could endanger many lives. His destination is Leipzig, the city of books. In its legendary Graphic Arts District, he hopes to see his great love, Mara, who is now engaged to the son of a wealthy publisher.
French Riviera, Nice, 1928. Little Liette finds, in the attic of the Château Trois Grâces hotel, some dusty suitcases left behind by the Russian families who visited the hotel every summer and who were murdered during the revolution. Inside, she discovers an old book with a mysterious lock.
Thirty years later, all the pieces of the past will fit together again once they discover the trail of a librarian who arrived in Leipzig years ago, at an abandoned villa by the sea and a mysterious library shrouded in fog.
A turbulent era. A secret manuscript. A love story that transcends time. A marvelous historical novel that evokes the magic of books.
Also by Kai Meyer:
THE BOOKS, THE BOY AND THE NIGHT
Dromer Knaur | November 2022
Rights sold: Spanish (Planeta)
«Second-hand book shops, huge libraries, love of stories and the only true literary town – told against the dark backdrop of German history. My most important novel.” Kai Meyer
A declaration of love to the world of books
Heavy fog shrouded the alleys and passages of the literary city of Leipzig, when in 1933 the Nazis seized power. This is where the tragic romance of book binder Jakob Steinfeld and the mysterious young woman unwinds. Juli has written a book that she entrusts to him alone. But soon after she disappears without a trace. Almost forty years later, Jakob’s son Robert is also addicted to books. When librarian Marie asks him to help her with a commission from the Pallandts, a mysterious family of publishers, they encounter the enigma of a book whose story is closely linked to Robert’s own story – it is the key to the fate of his parents.
