I bet I can speak French

It has been 30 years since the narrator found his 13-year-old girlfriend and sister Astrid dead in the cornfield, murdered. Not least the question of whether he took an envelope with a voucher from the deceased at that time keeps a carousel of remorse and guilt in motion. Again and again, the village scenery unfolds in his mind; half-knowledge, remembered snippets of language, and the spirit of the time haunt him - and lead him back to the scene of the crime.

Going far away could be one way to forget. Or to revisit everything again in a different light on a mountain pasture. In a driven, oral-like yet carefully probing language, Sebastian Steffen's narrative follows the sirens of a crime. Humor becomes fragile, grief turns aggressive, pain is sharp-tongued, and imagination is profound in this impressive work of linguistic art.