The Secrets of the Universe

Nina, a seventeen-year-old orphan, takes care of Sophia Molitor, who spends her days inside her beautiful, old villa pining for her husband Eugen, gone missing in China years ago. Paul Arimond, protagonist of Scheuer’s previous novel “The Language of Birds”, is a soldier who has miraculously survived an attack in Afghanistan. He will recover and Nina will fall in love with him. Just like The Gray Hairs—a group of old men who observe and comment on everything that goes on in the surrounding small towns and villages—Nina sees everything happening in the Urft district. She constantly thinks about her disappeared brother, Gregor, as she discovers all the secrets, everyday goings-on, and hidden intrigue in this corner of Germany: A treasure trove of silver in the abandoned mine? Lünebach launched himself into outer space inside his own homemade space capsule? Sophisticated and thrilling, suggestive and poetic, Scheuer’s new novel reveals the dashed hopes and requited desires of a universe constantly in motion and revealing some of its secrets. Norbert Scheuer was born in 1951 and lives in Eifel, Germany, where he works as a systems programmer. He has been the recipient of numerous literature prizes and his recent work includes the novels Peehs Liebe (Peeh’s Love, 2012) and Die Sprache der Vögel (The Language of Birds, 2015), nominated for the Leipzig Book Fair Prize. His novel Überm Rauschen (The Sound of the Weir, 2009) was on the shortlist for the 2010 German Book Prize and also was named the 2010 Book of the City for Cologne and the surrounding region.