Allegra

London, summer 2012. Preparations for the Olympic Games are in full swing. Abel, a promising young trader and father of a young daughter, wanders through the city. He has just lost everything. Lizzie, with whom he lives, has kicked him out of the apartment, his friend and mentor Firouz has fired him from the job in the bank he had previously got him.

In a shabby hotel, in the midst of marginalized people, refugees and migrants, Abel tries to recapture himself. Abel changes, rebuilds himself. He wants to take his fate into his own hands. With an explosive device, he approaches the site of the Olympic Games. What price must Abel pay to become again who he was?

"Allegra" by Philippe Rahmy is a frenetic work in which the violent acts of our time clash against the backdrop of a gritty and harsh London. High finance, power, social insecurity, prevented identities, radicalities, terrorism, love, grief and delusion. The main character, Abel, lives through these worlds as if torn apart. The novelistic play resembles a seemingly hopeless labyrinth, and the intense, untamed, and expressive literary images burn themselves permanently into the reader's memory." Swiss Federal Jury for Literature

"Those who write want to silence the animal within them," Rahmy writes in the travel novel "The Armor." In "Allegra," Abel will go through hell before becoming human again.