Grosse Liebe

The great love. But what is that? He fell in love for the first time at fifteen and has never experienced anything so profound since: In just a few, far too few days, a boy experiences all the extremes of infatuation, from the first kiss to the final rejection. Set in the microcosm of a high school in the early 1980s and against the backdrop of the West German peace marches, Navid Kermani presents the timeless spectacle of love in all its majesty and absurdity. He intertwines the depiction of first glances, touches, and farewell letters with stories from Arab-Persian love mysticism. For the reader, a passage through earthly and divine landscapes of the soul unfolds, bridging cultures and centuries almost unnoticed.