MW

Something True, Something Cruel, Something Real is a novel for our time: nonlinear, emotionally raw, spiritually restless. A story that dares to shimmer where others stay silent. Written for the dreamers — the seekers — of a restless age.

Synopsis

Max Grünbaum returns with his partner Hieronymus to Ekeby — a quiet estate in the countryside that quickly becomes anything but peaceful. What was meant to be a retreat turns into a stage for longing, rupture, and return.

Surrounded by friends who each carry their own silences. Leander, barbed with grief. Lea, too sharp to stay close. Hanna, drifting between cultic healing and quiet despair. And Hieronymus — too absorbed in his new job to really see Max.

As summer turns to midwinter, their days unfold between an intoxicating Midsummer gathering and the shadow-drenched Rauhnächte — the twelve mythic nights of winter. Play becomes ritual. Memory becomes revelation. Ghosts appear. Forgotten diaries resurface. And then — a body is found – and Max realizes: history is alive in the house.

Tone and Form

Told in lyrical, fragmented scenes, this novel is part:

• emotional séance
• queer Bildungsroman
• auto fictional kaleidoscope

Always somehow searching.

Frankfurt Book Fair 2025 – English and German Submission Package

“The prose combines lyrical precision with cinematic rhythm, blending myth and realism.”

Something True, Something Cruel, Something Real interlaces three timelines — wartime Europe, contemporary Ekeby, and fragments of the Viking age — to explore the inheritance of silence, intimacy, and historical guilt.

[English Sample] 

[English Exposé]  

[German Sample]

[German Exposé]