Current Book

Jakob – The Voice of the New Age

In preparation for publication

The Book

Jakob returns. To the city he left. To the people he wanted to forget. And to the question that never released him: who am I when I stop running?

Rostock, 1615. Jakob Albrecht, son of a bookbinder, grows up in a world of paper and ink – and gradually discovers the power that lies in words. A novel about craft, language, and the courage to find one's own path in a time of upheaval.

AuthorElias Hart
GenreLiterary fiction
StatusIn preparation
LanguagesGerman · English

Excerpt

A passage

The train stopped. Jakob didn't look up. He had known this station for thirty years, known the way the brakes squealed over the last hundred metres, known the smell of old concrete and wet autumn that seeped through every crack.

He hadn't needed to come. No one had called. And yet here he was, with a bag too light for everything he was leaving behind.

The doors are opening, said the speaker voice. Mechanical, without opinion. Like some things in this life.

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Characters & Themes

Jakob

Mid-forties, divorced, historian. A man who searches for answers in the past – and misses the present in doing so. Until he goes back.

The Voice

A force, an impulse, perhaps a memory. What Jakob hears when it's quiet – and what it wants from him – is at the heart of the novel.

The Town

Unnamed, but alive. A small town with history, secrets and people who stayed – and never stopped waiting.

Themes of the novel

IdentityReturnLossMemoryResponsibilityCourageHistory & Present