SIMON URBAN & MELANIE AMANN - "German Glück" Book Premiere

Simon Urban ("Between Worlds" co-authored with Juli Zeh) presents his new book "German Glück" in conversation with Melanie Amann.

"German Glück" is a timely, incisive social novel that could be Germany's "The White Lotus": seven fates collide in a luxury resort in the German provinces.

A burning Tesla in Mecklenburg marks the turning point: Roger Ross, freshly fired and without baggage, flees to the luxury resort "Eden" and reinvents himself radically. But the hotel is no refuge - it is a magnificent final station for the illusions of our time. In "Eden", this crumbling fortress of West German prosperity, all guests seem to cling to a life that has long become history: a TV comedian burned by shitstorm, a tobacco manager who lost his wife to climate activism, twins living on their mother's pension, and a management assistant determined to save the resort through a murderous plan. This community of fate dances on the edge of an abyss.

Bitterly vicious and wildly comic at once: a literary reckoning with beautiful appearances, in which the German soul books wellness and gets madness.

Simon Urban, born in 1975 in Hagen, studied German literature in Münster and attended the German Literary Institute in Leipzig. His novel "Plan D" (2011) was translated into eleven languages; his advertising film #heimkommen, with 70 million views, ranks among the most successful German viral videos ever. He wrote the screenplay for the ARD film "Exit" (2020). His novel "How It All Began and Who Died in the Process" won the Hamburg Literary Prize. In 2023, "Between Worlds" was published, co-authored with Juli Zeh.

Melanie Amann, journalist, author, and lawyer, worked for Der Spiegel for over twelve years, most recently as deputy editor-in-chief, and has established herself as one of the country's most significant political journalists.