Sturz der Tage in die Nacht

Antje Rávic Strubel writes about an unusual and inescapable love and about the long shadow of a bygone political system.

On an excursion to an island bird sanctuary in the Swedish Baltic, Erik, a young man in his mid-twenties, meets the ornithologist Inez. She fascinates him, and so he stays on. But Inez is reserved, seeming dogged by a past which Erik finds alluring. He begins to pursue her. Another man arrives on the island with Erik and doesn’t leave either: Rainer Feldberg. Gradually, Erik finds out there is an old link between Inez and this man with opaque motives. Over the summer, Erik is initiated not only into the endangered world of birds, but also into a story that threatens him himself and his love: the life story of an East German boy, invented as a Stasi legend and a tale political tale.