Hamburg Noir (Akashic Noir)

The historic northern port city Hamburg joins Berlin as the Akashic Noir Series continues its foray into one of Western Europe’s most storied nations

"Even the supposedly 'most beautiful city in the world' has its dark sides. This well-edited anthology impressively shows them in literary form. Powerful stories: Hamburg from below." —Hamburger Abendblatt

“Hamburg, the metropolis on the River Elbe, has always been an important trading city, a gateway to the world, a center for musicals, and a tourist magnet. But there are other sides to Hamburg [and] the editor of this volume shows this in his fourteen short stories by renowned authors . . . These are short crime stories, but they are also character and milieu studies, masterfully and pointedly told, despite and precisely because of their brevity, and they cast a spotlight on Hamburg’s dark side. Absolutely worth reading, even if you don’t live on the Alster, and therefore recommended to all readers.” —EKZ

From the Introduciton by Jan Karsten:

The many facets of Hamburg’s ambivalent identity, forged over centuries, are on full display in the stories collected in this anthology. This book assembles some of the city’s finest and best-known writers, luminaries in the world of crime fiction and German literature, featuring multiple recipients of the German Crime Fiction Award and the Hubert Fichte Prize, among others. Relative newcomers rub shoulders with established authors, some of whose work now spans decades . . .

The fourteen stories in this collection all look to where good (crime) fiction has always looked: toward lesser-known settings and living situations, repeatedly drawing our attention to lives overlooked, the lost souls and the powerless who have slipped through the cracks of commerce. The perspectives on the metropolis are as varied as the writers’ backgrounds, resulting in a varied depiction of Hamburg as a colorful hodgepodge of people inhabiting a lively city of millions. Between water and spirits, between power and oblivion, between dream and reality. 

FEATURING BRAND-NEW STORIES FROM: Nora Luttmer, Till Raether, Matthias Wittekindt, Ingvar Ambjørnsen, Bela B Felsenheimer, Jasmin Ramadan, Frank Göhre, Timo Blunck, Katrin Seddig, Tina Uebel, Zoë Beck, Brigitte Helbling, Kai Hensel, Robert Brack; translated from German by Noah Harley, Paul Young, and Geoff Howes; translated from German by Noah Harley, Geoffrey Howes, and Paul Young