About People

Press Quotes

Praise for Juli Zeh

“Zeh challenges readers to consider how complicit we are in our current political dilemmas.”

Los Angeles Times

Praise for About People

“Juli Zeh has proven herself as an adept novelist of social satire. About People has been on the bestseller list ever since it was published last spring: it is a Zeitroman for the corona-pandemic era.”
Dialog International

“A revealing novel about the state of our nation.”
SWR

“Juli Zeh’s new work shoots straight to the heart of Germany’s excessive demands: with a lot of wit and compassion and also with a large portion of hope for a more conciliatory society.”
ZDF

“The first real corona novel, which takes place in the middle of lockdown in spring 2020 and subtly describes the social and very private consequences of the pandemic.”
Süddeutsche Zeitung

“A coolheaded and politically astute portrait of a village where life is precarious, beset by a dying infrastructure and right-wing attitudes.”
Bayern2

“Juli Zeh has caused a stir with About People. The novel is gripping and doesn’t make it easy for itself or its audience.”
rbb Inforadio

“About People goes beneath the surface of ideologies and attitudes.”
Stuttgarter Zeitung

“A deft, imaginative, and absorbing novel about a post-heroic protagonist who is sweating from hard work rather than fear, caught between stoicism and struggle.”
Kölner Stadtanzeiger

“A conciliatory novel that does not conceal evil, but demonstrates that the world, viewed less ideologically, could be a little more humane.”
Deutschlandfunk Kultur

“A novel for our times, especially our Covid-times, in which much is clarified and intensified, including failure, loneliness, and sanguine fits of hatred.”
WDR3

“I would love to recommend this to everyone to read, to break down all these walls that somehow exist between the different groups in society.”
Rbb Kultur

“Juli Zeh is a master of satire, and her dialogues are always on fire, sparking and glowing fiercely, keeping the reader alert at all times. And yet Zeh also creates vivid and fascinating portraits of the characters that inhabit the novel. The way the relationship between Dora and Goth ends is just heartbreaking, and at the same time it shows how skillfully Zeh balances the thin line between comedy and grief. I cannot imagine a more important and timely message than the one that is delivered in this novel.”
ANNE LOUISE MORSETH-NORDBRYHN, Gyldendal Norsk

Praise for New Year

“Because the thriller and the analysis of society are here so densely intertwined, New Year is perhaps Juli Zeh’s best book to date.”
Süddeutsche Zeitung

“New Year is an impressively original book whose elegant construction testifies to Zeh’s writerly prowess.”
New Books in German

“Past experience is part of us, like a code in computer software―Zeh, in her usual straightforward way, has condensed this to make a compact novel.”
Stern

“A thrilling, cinematic story.”
VPRO Boeken

“With New Year, Juli Zeh has succeeded in writing a lost-memory thriller and at the same time an accurate psychogram of today’s overwhelmed fathers.”
WDR 3

“With New Year, Juli Zeh shows that good entertainment can indeed be easily coupled with depth and literary quality. This psycho-thriller is well on its way to becoming a bestseller.”
SRF 2 Kultur

“A compact, highly concentrated story with gripping dynamics and a superb ‘aha’ effect.”
SWR2

“Juli Zeh has written not only an enthralling psychogram of a man, but also quite nearly a classical tragedy.”
Südwest Presse

“This book develops into a rapid, exciting drama, of a kind you might have never read before.”
Der Kleinborsteler

“New Year dives deep into the psyche of modern, emancipated man and investigates to what extent experiences in our childhood influence how we live our lives as adults.”
JAN 

“Juli Zeh maintains suspense, homes in on the moments of unreality, the sense of magic, and offers an unexpected twist at the end.”
Libération

“The landscape is a metaphor, the natural elements an allegory of the main character’s inner turmoil and traumas by means of which the reader, witness to a progressive, gripping psychological unveiling left unresolved until the final page, sees this hidden inner world resurface.”
Diacritik 

“New Year explores the profundities of being and attempts a decryption of the mechanisms of the unconscious, all the while following the codes of the thriller to ensnare the reader. Juli Zeh successfully constructs a psychological novel, all the while avoiding the pitfalls of the genre. This hypnotically written novel is one you devour.”
La Provence 

“An intense and gripping psychological thriller. The second part of this novel, impressive in its mastery of narrative, will cost you some hours of sleep.”
Midi Libre 

“Juli Zeh marvelously describes the traumatism of abandonment. Reaching the summit is an effective allegory for Henning’s dive into himself. The German novelist brilliantly succeeds in launching him into the depths of himself and of what he left unsaid, all the better to liberate him of it.”
L’Alsace 

“Juli Zeh wields the mechanisms of the psychological thriller and adds her own trademark, which is to let the heroes brush with catastrophe without always drowning in it. The tension the novelist keeps going isn’t resolved until the final page. New Year manages to open up the silent depths of lives that are too plotted out, much like the potholes that shake up rental cars on the roads of the Canary Islands.”
Le Monde des Livres

“Juli Zeh dramatizes the resurgence of that which has been suppressed by means of an efficient thriller that leaves the reader breathless and deeply shaken.”
L’Obs 

“The suppressed drama suddenly unravels before our bewildered eyes, leaving our hearts pounding and our minds racing. Once devoured, New Year obsesses its reader for days on end. Juli Zeh strikes hard and strikes home.”
Transfuge 

“An experience of psychological dissection. New Year is a vertiginous plunge into the psyche of a man straining under the weight of what he believes he must achieve and, in a subtle game of smoke and mirrors, into our own neuroses. With the tale of a mad ascent, the novel defuses, with the author’s characteristic scathing and elegant irony, the diktat of perfection and permanence extolled by the media that has invaded the sphere of social life and intimacy, and invites us to respond with a middle finger stuck up with pride.”
Lire

“You don’t know where you’re going, but you unconsciously feel that you are going far, very far away, a lot farther than the Lanzarote roads. To tell you more would be to spoil the pleasure provided by this novel, which is as brilliant and amoral as can be and explores our most common depths.”
Page des libraires 

“It is genuinely admirable how, page after page, Juli Zeh manages to develop a truly nerve-racking thriller. Ever changing register, she always starts with questions rising from the conditions of life in today’s society.”
DNA

“Juli Zeh adapts adult distress to children’s terrors, joins a faltering present with a foundering past. As always in her novels, she shows a formidable mastery of time. New Year is an intimate drama, as well as a promise.”
Julieamimots.com 

“In this harrowing thriller, Juli Zeh evokes children’s solitude, their panicked fears of abandonment, their incapacity to see their parents as anything but perfect.”
Arts Libres 

“In this gripping tale, Juli Zeh interrogates relationships with childhood, the couple’s power games, free will in a conformist and demanding society.”
Le Matricule des Anges 

“New Year is an inspired portrait that manages to touch upon something essential about this character we begin to follow, love, and desire to see get better. Juli Zeh makes this mirage of an insular Christmas look very real indeed.”
YAËL HIRSCH, Toutelaculture.com 

“This psychological family thriller is as unsettling as it gets.”
Le Vif/L’Express

“A gripping novel.”
JULIE FOSSE, aVoir-aLire.com 

“With total mastery of these fine mechanics, Juli Zeh confronts a man with his demons.”

ALEXANDRE FILLON, Les Echos Week-End

“Juli Zeh has rediscovered the somewhat lost art of the psychological thriller.”

Libération

“In New Year, Juli Zeh invents a new type: the hysterical man. She could just as easily have written two separate books. A poignant sketch of modern narcissistic parents, and their roots in the past.”

Trouw