Jürgen Bansemer & Ute Nyssen Award

Juli Zeh – Corpus Delicti. A Trial

fiction

272pp (46,600 words)

» About the author

English sample translation (pdf)

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Young, attractive, gifted and independent – that’s Mia Holl, a thirty-year-old woman who must stand trial before a jury. She is charged with excessive love (to her brother), excessive intellect (she thinks scientifically), and excessive independence of mind. In a society in which the care of the body has supplanted all intellectual values, to possess these inner resources is sufficient to be classified as a dangerous subject. Mia Holl seeks to prove that her brother, convicted for an alleged rape, is innocent. Her love for her brother, who took his own life, is part of what drives her to assume a position against the system, known as 'The Method.'

In CORPUS DELICTI Juli Zeh devises the science-fiction scenario of a dictatorship of health in the year 2057. She depicts a system that controls everyone and everything. In this system, health has become the highest civic duty. 'The Method' demands a regular stint of exercise as well as the submission of reports on sleep and diet. The state is literally informed about every step its citizens take.

CORPUS DELICTI deals with extremely contemporary questions: To what extent can and will the state restrict individual rights? Does the individual have a right to resistance? A visionary and highly suspenseful book about our future, which we are less and less able to determine.

Full English translation available

Rights sold

Brazil - Record
Bulgaria – Atlantis
Croatia - Fraktura
Denmark - Samleren/Rosinante
France - Actes Sud
Italy - Ponte Alle Grazie
Korea – Minumsa
The Netherlands - Ambo|Anthos
Poland - W.A.B.
Russia – Azbooka
Spain (Castilian World) - Random House Mondadori
Sweden - Weyler
Taiwan (Chinese complex) – Linking Publishing
Turkey - Metis
UK/Commonwealth - HarvillSecker/Random House

audio book - Der Audio Verlag
book club - Büchergilde
paperback – Random House/btb

film rights - cine plus

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Reviews

»With CORPUS DELICTI, Juli Zeh has become the female George Orwell of the present.«
Deutschlandradio

»Juli Zeh’s straightforward, direct approach has previously enravished readers of her novels ADLER UND ENGEL and SCHILF. She doesn’t hold herself up with long-winded elaborations on the surveillance state but outlines a clever and fascinating crime setting - confronting her readers with the philosophical pros and cons of an almost-ideal society deprived of its metaphysics altogether. (...) Juli Zeh is an olympic narrator who regards her characters from an extremely wide angle. (...) This author excels in creating experimental set-ups, sharp-witted intellectual ping-pong games, told with a narrative verve and sanguinity that is nowadays only to be found (yet slightly more awkward) in the works of Bernhard Schlink, and that Friedrich Dürrenmatt once brought to perfection. (...) The novel presents a brilliant Critique of Pure Hygienic Reason, with the protagonists arguing about the genetic improvement of the human body, about the promise of global security, and about the human ‚right to illness.«
Der SPIEGEL

»The book of the hour. (...) Whenever our reasons for fear get too strong, the fear ceases. (...) This is why in the real world, with bad news dominating the agenda, panic does not spread because the collective consciousness blocks out all inconvenient facts and worries about the future. Juli Zeh reminds us that the future happens here and now. Her new book CORPUS DELICTI makes a case against fearlessness, a dystopian scenario that is rooted in the existential crisis of our present and forces us to consider its consequences. Telling the future from the past and the past from the future, the author teaches us fear. (...)
A work of prophetic historic pessimism, CORPUS DELICTI is closer to Aldous Huxley’s 'Brave New World' than to Orwell’s '1984'. Juli Zeh pictures the lapse into brutality with a strange coldness. She is an analytic, apocalyptical writer in the tradition of Jewgenij Samjatin, Ray Bradbury, and Philip K. Dicks. Her literary form is a juridical tragedy turned into prose, a treatise played out in various roles, a science fiction crime scenario, a fast-paced dispute. (...)
Once again, the great issues of the past two centuries are at stake: Liberty and justice, civilization and nature, truth and propaganda. (...)
The present is first and foremost a debate on state power. While its opponents now call for state invention, and denationalizers hysterically demand nationalization, Juli Zeh tacitly raises the question what makes a successful state. Most skillfully, she raises it in full awareness of the present etatist lapse. She displays courage in cutting off the shouts of triumph that herald the ‚end of history’.«
Die ZEIT

»Juli Zeh’ s CORPUS DELICTI is a negative utopia that hits the nerve of our deeply frightened society.
(...) While the principle of prevention slowly conquers all spheres of life, it is rarely met by artistic criticism, let alone has any narrative attempted to make the permanent state of emergency visible behind the promise of prevention. Now ‚Corpus Delicti’ marks a radical change.
(...) Again, we meet Juli Zeh as the moralist writer we remember her as from her previous novels ADLER UND ENGEL and SCHILF, as well as from her frequent political statements. A lawyer by profession, she possesses the perspicacity and the professional knowledge to phrase her appeal against the spirit of our time so that it unfolds its full potential – yet never in an embarrassing manner. Untouched by the snobbish resentment that is readily thrown at any non-ironic attempt of cultural critique, Juli Zeh effortlessly translates analytical statements into literary form – in CORPUS DELICTI, she uses the utopian form that has always encouraged discourse. Thus analytical reason is inspired by literature, and vice versa: Narration and reasoning are inseparable. One can always count on this author to prove it.«
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

»Exciting like a crime thriller, and rational like an intellectual debate (...) Not without reason, Huxley’s dystopian vision is often called upon when discussing the youth and health mania of the early 21st century (...), where illness is increasingly regarded as a self-inflicted condition rather than as a stroke of fate. CORPUS DELICTI, the new novel by Juli Zeh, centers on these very thoughts. It reads like an ambitious yet never too demanding synthesis of different genres: science fiction and brother-and-sister-story, anti-utopia and legal drama. (...) Convinced of Moritz’ innocence, Mia is caught in the wheels of justice. A witch hunt begins in the Brave New World, reaching a most perfidious end. ‚Life is an offer that may also be refused’, Mia states at one point. Yet in this perfect future society, she’s terribly mistaken.«
Neue Zürcher Zeitung

»Juli Zeh has written a novel of razor-sharp intelligence and compelling logic, offering a highly alarming scenario: Noble environmental goals and health care politics taking a life of their own and descending into brutaliy, a prevention state turned into a prohibition state, resistance against the ‚system’ rising in quick-witted citizens like Mia. A thought-provoking, utterly contemporary work of fiction!«
ARD druckfrisch (TV show)

»CORPUS DELICTI is a bitter parable on the totalitarian state, showing a distorted picture of our possible future.«
Norddeutscher Rundfunk

»The plot device of CORPUS DELICTI lies in thinking through the drifts and looming threats of the present right to the end.«
Süddeutsche Zeitung

»A timely parable raising the question of how far the human body may be incorporated into or suppressed by the body of the state.«
Frankfurter Rundschau

»A full-force debate of existential questions revealing the present condition of a society weakened by nihilism and the loss of values. (...) Not in a long time has a novel hit so close to the central nerve of society. Her courage cannot be praised strongly enough.«
Frankfurter Neue Presse

»She continues to think where the current debate ends, between fitness craze and the ‘popular sports’ of a visit to the doctor.«
Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung

»Juli Zeh is one among few authors that occasionally muster the courage to take a philosophical stance.«
Deutschlandradio

»Her signature style is what makes this author so worth reading: Effervascent prose, showing political as well as philosophical commitment, her superior command of language, flowering imagery and imagination, and a dramaturgical talent honed by Aristoteles. (...) CORPUS DELICTI is another stroke of genius by Juli Zeh.«
Wiener Zeitung

»A delightful book, rich in lyrical images, astute thoughts and ... method.«
Kleine Zeitung

»CORPUS DELICTI points to the dangers arising from the forced perfection of all personal and social spheres. (...) Where salvation is measured against outward appearances, souls are doomed to wither, and humans turn into machines designed for obedience – stone-hearted timeservers that show no sign of protest or resistance.«
Titel Magazin

»An iridescent construct of ideas.«
Der Bund

»This is the strength of this novel: that it offers material to think about to the smallest detail. And that it identifies the present propagation of health by inflating it to its extreme. Where does prevention end and where does paternalism begin? (...) Zeh creates a dazzling intellectual edifice in ‘Corpus delicti’. She does what she can do best: She lets her characters fence with arguments. And thus hits the target.«
St. Galler Tagblatt

»Juli Zeh plays to her admirable strengths in her new novel: technical professionalism, high sensitivity for language and the intellectual ability to reflect.« Oberösterreichische Nachrichten

»Juli Zeh succeeds with a political novel of the future.«
Junge Welt

»In CORPUS DELICTI, a young woman must stand trial before a jury court. The charges: ‚excessive love, excessive intelligence, and excessive mental independence’. These very attributes describe the outstanding qualities of the writer Juli Zeh. (...) A trained jurist herself, again and again she comments on sociopolitical and cultural problems, taking a vehement and competent stand.«
Gerty Spies Award, Jury Statement

»Juli Zeh tackles explosive topics, and she depicts them with linguistic aplomb. Her latest novel CORPUS DELICTI pays tribute to the virtuosity and passion Zeh applies to the literary treatment of social upheaval in the tension-filled area between individual liberty and state power.«
Solothurn Literature Award, Jury Statement

»D’une écriture froide et clinique, Juli Zeh, narratrice à l’omniscience très ‚Big Brother’, suit Mia dans son combat, qui la mène au tribunal, puis en prison. (...) CORPUS DELICTI, comme tout bon roman de science-fiction, explore moins les virtualités du futur que les maux et les dérives du présent en leur offrant un miroir grossissant.«
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