Part suspenseful thriller, part wickedly effective social satire, Empty Hearts is a novel for our times, examining urgent questions of morality, politics, and culture and presenting a startling vision of a future where empathy is a thing of the past. On their heels is a new terrorist organization called the Empty Hearts, a group unlike any Britta and Babak have encountered before. Then The Bridge's database is stolen, driving Britta, Babak, and their latest recruit into hiding. Using a complex candidate-identifying algorithm designed by Babak, a brilliant programmer and Britta's only employee, The Bridge has effectively cornered the market, and terrorism never takes place without Britta's services-which is why news of a thwarted suicide attack in Leipzig comes as a shock. Britta, a wife, mother, and successful businesswoman, ignores the daily news and concentrates on her family and her work running a clinic specializing in suicide prevention.īut her legitimate business is connected to a secret and far more lucrative operation known as The Bridge, an outfit that supplies terrorist organizations looking to employ suicide bombers. With their democracy facing the wrecking ball, most well-off Germans turn inward, focusing on their own lives. There's a global financial crisis, armed conflict, and mass migration, and an ultrapopulist movement governs in Germany. Description A prescient political and psychological thriller ripped from tomorrow's headlines, by one of Germany's most celebrated contemporary novelistsĪ few short years from now, the world is an even more uncertain place than it is today, and politics everywhere is marching rightward: Trump is gone, but Brexit is complete, as is Frexit.

Empty Hearts by Juli Zeh