An
exceptional crime novel. -- Kolja Mensing * TAZ *
It's been a long time since any crime author started out so strongly, so visually. -- Tobias Gohlis * Die Zeit *
Oliver Bottini,
one of the few German authors who play in crime-writing's premier league, really knows how to tell a good story. * Frankfurter Rundschau *
Tension without brutality,
local colour without small-minded sentimentality,
good intelligent reading with depth. -- Christine Hage * Handelsblatt *
A piercing examination of our reality . . .
Bottini uses the full potential of the genre to look deep into humanity's abyss and sees there the concealed traumas of German society -- Tomasz Kurianowicz * Die Zeit *
Gripping. * Tatler. *
The first of his award-winning Black Forest novels to appear in English. It has
an arresting opening image: a Buddhist monk with a head injury strides across the snowy landscape of the border country between Germany and France . . .
a surprising and genuinely shocking case. -- Joan Smith * The Sunday Times *
A nicely done shock thriller * Weekend Sport *
An atmospheric, original story that will keep you hooked to
the final heart-rending revelations
* Crime Review *
Bottini has established himself as
a strong new voice in crime with this inventive mystery . . .
The fictional landscape is beguiling and the story utterly gripping * Book Noir *
With its
cinematic writing style, its
brilliant sense of location and its strong visual depiction of an inhospitable landscape,
Zen provides
an intelligent and engrossing crossover novel between a police procedural and the study of an individual's personal collapse -- Ewa Sherman * Riveting Reviews *
Tension without brutality, local colour without small-minded sentimentality, good, intelligent reading with depth * Handelsblatt *
