The Passenger

• Longlisted for the German Book Prize 2024
• The new novel by Jürgen Ponto Prize winner Franz Friedrich
• Franz Friedrich was a finalist for the 2023 Döblin Prize with an extract from "The Passenger"

English sample translation available

From a place that should have been the future

After years, Heather returns to Colchis. To the sanatorium where she was evacuated as a teenager - through time travel. Heather, like many other evacuees, has since suffered from phantom memories and the pain of loneliness, having left behind a life and a future she barely knew. She hopes to find inner peace, but Colchis has also changed. The sanatorium has fallen into disrepair, the remaining residents have retreated into their own world. Matthias, evacuated from the time of the Peasant Wars, nevertheless becomes a confidant for Heather, showing her that to surrender means the end of humanity.

Franz Friedrich virtuously tells of a future in which all the missed opportunities of the past are present. But also of friendship, community and the insatiable desire for change.

"an incredible novel, fantastically told" - Deutschlandfunk Kultur, Miriam Zeh

"an ambivalent but strangely comforting utopia." - Kulturnews, Carsten Schrader

"Friedrich's concept of literature is based on opening up worlds of possibility in language that is as quiet as it is beautiful" Deutschlandfunk Büchermarkt, Christoph Schröder

"Exceptional novel about the future with profoundly thought-provoking ideas" - Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger, Oliver Nowack