Book description
Meet Fahner, the retired small-town doctor who resorts to the garden
axe when his patience with his cruel wife runs out.
Or Patrick, so entranced by the sight of his sleeping girlfriend
that he cuts a small piece out of her back, just to see what she
tastes like.
Or the silent assassin who calmly despatches two Neo-Nazi thugs on a
railway platform.
A nameless lawyer invites us to read an extraordinary dossier of
violent and unspeakable acts. All the crimes have one thing in common:
the guilty are never convicted in a court of law. But however heinous
the crime, the narrator shows how the human circumstances behind
events can tell a different story.
Ferdinand von Schirach, himself a criminal lawyer, unveils a
terrifying world where criminals elude justice, and the apparent
innocents are perhaps the most dangerous of all. 'Guilt,' writes von
Schirach, 'always presents a bit of a problem.' In this nuanced and
telling collection, guilt is indeed never as clear cut as the crime.
Ferdinand von Schirach was born in Munich in 1964 and is one of
Germany's most prominent defence lawyers.
Verbrechen
(
Crime
) became an instant bestseller in Germany when it was launched in 2009.
It is to be published in over thirty territories around the world, and
is being made into a film. Von Schirach's new besteller,
Schuld
(
Sin
) is forthcoming in translation from Chatto & Windus.
