Willenbrock

Christoph Hein

See the full ranking

Bernd Willenbrock is the owner of a used-car dealership in the newly unified Germany. In the nascent free market of Central Europe, the former East German engineer seems to be the paradigm of the new world: a successful businessman, an owner of real estate, and a generous husband. Prosperity seems guaranteed by a steady stream of cash-only clients from Eastern Europe, and plans for a glitzy new showroom are firmly underway. Yet little by little, a series of ever-more menacing incidents—an attempted break-in, the theft of several cars, a vicious beating--erode his innermost certainties. No amount of locks and latches, it seems, can contain his growing obsession with external safety or stop the coming violence.