![]() ![]() In the world Zeh imagines, the UK has left the European Union, inspiring other EU nations to create their own nationalist movements with catchy portmanteaux – Frexit, Spexit and Swexit. Before Brexit, before impeachment hearings, before the death of George Floyd. Tantalizingly familiar while remaining comfortingly speculative, on publication in August 2019 the novel seemed darkly, even ruthlessly, nihilistic. Empty Hearts now has the opposite problem. The Paramount Network recently attempted a reboot of Heathers as a television series, only to cancel it in the wake of several school shootings (something that existed, but wouldn’t garner the level of media attention we’re accustomed to until the Columbine tragedy a decade later), and then finally airing a sanitized version at the end of 2019. A film that was, you could argue, ahead of its time. Flaunting social taboos, specifically those around suicide and terrorism, it reminds me of the 1988 black comedy /teen angst film Heathers. The setting, a dystopian world only two decades removed from our own, is the most intriguing part of German writer Juli Zeh’s 2019 thriller, Empty Hearts. ![]() ![]() ![]() Talese (PRH) / August, 2019 / 288 pp / Translated by John Cullen ![]()
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