Reading by Anja Jonuleit: "Where the Wind Carries Names" - a gripping novel

"She had decided not to think about the past anymore: the places, the people in her homeland, and certainly not about what happened that summer of 1946, when she was eight years old and everything began."

2023. Eighty-five-year-old Inge Sundermann reluctantly accepts an invitation to a class reunion in the Lüneburg Heath. The place of her childhood carries a terrible guilt that she took upon herself as a child and buried deep within. But the past catches up with Inge in the form of diary entries by Helga von Borcke, a woman who began in 1946 to chronicle this idyllic landscape in the shadow of Bergen-Belsen.

1946. Eight-year-old Inge finds the body of a young woman in the forest on her way to a violin lesson. A tragic process unfolds, full of lies, cover-ups, and crimes against humanity, which strikes Inge with full force many decades later.

The idyllic Lüneburg Heath becomes the scene of war crimes whose perpetrators remain undiscovered in their families for decades. On two timelines, Anja Jonuleit's new novel, published on 25.03.2026, tells of the horrific events in the Lüneburg Heath and their concealment, of old Nazi networks - and of two women (1946 and 2023) who refuse to let the past rest.

A gripping, deeply moving novel rooted in reality.

Anja Jonuleit, born in Bonn and raised on Lake Constance, worked for several years at the German Embassy in Rome and Damascus. She then studied Italian and English in Munich, worked as a translator and court interpreter, and began writing. Since 2007, her novels have regularly appeared on the SPIEGEL bestseller list.

She is known for her thorough research: she travels to the settings of her novels and speaks with witnesses.