Into the Pale Heart of Summer

What if the future has already begun — only without us?

The setting is the near future. For years, the sun has been beating down relentlessly from the sky. The unbearable heat has made the South become uninhabitable, and turned national governments into nothing more than a facade. Those who could afford it have moved to northern Scotland, Greenland, Canada, or Siberia in good time. Only a handful of people remain in their homelands, Fausto among them. In a largely abandoned village, he and a few neighbors struggle to survive. Everyday life is hard and monotonous. That is, until one day a beautiful, taciturn young woman appears who seems enviably unaffected by the heat. Fausto falls in love and finds hope. He has no idea that Valérie is associated with an outrageous secret.

#18 SPIEGEL Bestseller (Hardcover list)

A haunting novel centering on a highly topical issue, while at the same time presenting an oppressive thought experiment

As if George Orwell and Aldous Huxley had written a novel together