The Have-Nots (German Book Prize winner)

The Have-Nots is a novel by German author Katharina Hacker (1967- ) published in 2006, won the German Book Prize in the same year, and was praised by the jury for having confronted our age's most pressing issues.


From Publishers Weekly [1]

Hacker (Morpheus; The Lifeguard) entwines the lives of three unusual households in post-9/11 suburban London. Isabelle and Jakob are 30-something German newlyweds who move to Britain after Jakob takes the job of a colleague killed on 9/11. Jakob is an attorney and Isabelle is an artist and wanderer, and their relationship, built hastily in the aftermath of 9/11 (Jakob was at the Trade Center on September 10 for business, and he met Isabelle the next day back in Germany; his colleague stayed behind in New York), has trouble reaching equilibrium. Next door lives Sara, a young girl with developmental problems who is abused by her parents and finds comfort in her cat, Polly. Meanwhile, Jim, a gruff drug dealer squatting in a house down the block, has taken a fancy to Isabelle, who reminds him of his missing girlfriend. Hacker plumbs the dark psyches of her characters—their capacities for violence, their desires and uncertainties and their guilt and shame—as Sara's home life worsens, eventually involving the neighbors. Hacker's prose, aided by Atkins's pristine translation, soars, particularly in her treatment of city and bourgeois life, and though her characters sometimes act inexplicably, she admirably explores modern urban life from the unsettled haves to the desperate have-nots. (Feb.)
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About the Author

Katharina Hacker is a German author best known for her award-winning novel Die Habenichtse (The Have-Nots). Hacker studied philosophy, history and Jewish studies at the University of Freiburg and the University of Jerusalem. Since 1996 she has been living as a freelance writer in Berlin. In 2006 she was the second writer to be awarded the German Book Prize for Die Habenichtse [2].

Katharina Hacker's previous books, Morpheus (2003) and The Lifeguard (2000), have earned her a reputation as one of the most discerning and elegant stylists in contemporary German literature. Born in 1967 in Frankfurt, she has lived in Berlin since 1996 [1].

[1] The Have-Nots, Amazon . com/gp/product/1933372419

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katharina_Hacker