It’s official! Max Annas’ new thriller The Wall (translated by Rachel Hildebrandt Reynolds) has made its North American debut in both paperback and audio versions! You can order here. The German edition of Max’s taut thriller earned him the 2017 German Crime Writing Prize, and we’re excited to bring this story to English-language readers.
In The Wall, we meet Moses. All he wants to do is get home to his girlfriend and enjoy a cold beer on a hot day. When his car breaks down outside of an exclusive gated community in East London, South Africa, Moses hops the fence seeking help from an acquaintance inside. What follows next are tense hours of mistaken identity, fear, and violence as Moses discovers that the walls that were meant to keep the residents safe are now his biggest danger. Head over to CrimeReads to read an excerpt from the novel:
The metallic clang of the gate was still echoing in Moses’ head as he started to question his decision. They all looked the same, these gated communities. Houses facing each other, curving or angular streets, walls on the distant horizon. But he really thought he remembered this place. The six streets that curved away in identical arcs from the wall at the entrance. The houses carefully placed so they didn’t sit directly across from each other. The gently sloping site. To the right, beyond the outer wall, a hilly terrain, quite high at certain points. To the left, the road along which he had just come. Moses had a good visual memory. Yes, this was the subdivision he had visited last year. But where did that classmate live? Danie? Or Janie after all? And what would be the best way for him to try to find him?
Three of the streets started to his right, three to his left, all of them running in similarly soft continuous curves to the left. The houses within sight of the entrance were all one-storied. He could see the two-storied ones starting much further back in the enclave. And behind those flowed the river, if he recalled rightly. The Nahoon River, beyond the back wall. He hadn’t gone back that far last time. Or had he? But how far was that?
“Remember,” Moses said to himself. He walked a few meters to the left and stared down one of the streets, then in the other direction. Decided to start with the rightmost street, tackle things systematically. He’d remember when he saw the house.
