Heilig Abend von Daniel Kehlmann

In the organizer's words:

It's Christmas Eve. Philosophy professor Judith is on her way to her parents when the police force her cab to stop. She is taken to the police station. Why? She doesn't find out at first. Instead, police officer Thomas asks her questions: "Where were you last night?" Is this going to be an interrogation? And how does he know so much about her? That her ex-husband was with her last night, for example. It all seems very creepy to Judith. He even knows her academic work and finally confronts her with her habilitation thesis on "Frantz Fanon's Concept of Revolutionary Violence", which deals with the right of the oppressed to defend themselves with violence. Thomas has evidence that Judith and her ex-husband have planted a bomb in a central location that is to go off at midnight on Christmas Eve. Does this bomb exist? And if so, where is it hidden? The policeman only has 90 minutes to find out.

With this interrogation, which comes across as a duel, author Daniel Kehlmann has created a suspenseful thriller about love and betrayal in times of uncertainty. As Kehlmann explained in an interview, his intention was "to show a real dilemma ... between freedom on the one hand and security on the other." And ultimately, behind this lies the much more profound question of distributive justice.