Brothers

In Jackie Thomae's novel, we meet two German half-brothers navigating their manhood, reluctant to centralise the colour of their skin as a way of defining how they see themselves and the decisions they make.. - MICK who teeters through the Berlin of the nineties. With no boundaries and no rules, the years blur into one big party. When it comes to an abrupt end, all that remains is a question. Time, money, friends, love - where did it all go? - GABRIEL who advances through his career with purpose and ambition. Moving from Leipzig to London, he becomes a sought-after architect, starting a family and establishing a successful business. His CV sets him apart as one of life's success stories, until a mundane incident tips him over the edge. A monumental fall from grace, he is suddenly framed as an aggressor: a Black man accused of racism, a family man accused of assault. The hedonist waiting for his next high, the next wave to ride, the next distraction, and the overachiever who piles nothing but pressure and expectations on himself. Besides being born in 1970, Mick and Gabriel seem to have nothing in common. Both children of their time, they are also sons of the same father: a Senegalese student in the GDR, who returns to Dakar leaving his sons with only his looks. And life questions to which both find their own, very different answers.....

About the Author :
Jackie Thomae was born in 1972 and is a German journalist and writer. She is the author of a number of works of non-fiction, fiction, literary translations, audio and screen plays. Her debut novel Momente der Klarheit, was published in 2015. Her second novel, Bruder was on the shortlist for the German Book Prize in 2019 and was awarded the Dusseldorf Literature Prize in 2020. In 2021 she was awarded a sponsorship prize of the Lessing Prize of the Free State of Saxony. Her literary translations include Zusammenkunft from the English original, Assembly by Natasha Brown and in 2023, she wrote an audio play based on the novel, Girl Woman Other by Bernardine Evaristo. Born in Halle, Jackie grew up in Leipzig and Berlin where she currently resides.

Review :
"Bruder is an incredibly gripping read, but Jackie Thomae also manages to weave existential questions and themes into it with great ease, almost in passing". 2019 Jury of the German Book Prize - "Bruder spans a wide arc and follows both life stories, which are also tales about love, family and cities, to the present day, fanning out debates, fashions and the depths of the decades featured. Thomae describes all this with a mixture of seriousness and relaxed storytelling that poses major questions without big words." Sabine Rohlf, Berliner Zeitung - "Bruder is a major social novel where Thomae deals with the heaviest themes with astonishing lightness." Koelner Stadt-Anzeiger- "Jackie Thomae's characters Mick and Gabriel claim for themselves what is natural for white males in European society. They do not want to be defined by their skin colour, and yet it continues to determine their lives." Mechthild Lanfermann, Deutschlandfunk Kultur - "This highly observant social novel shows that skin colour and racism are more complicated than the social justice warriors think." Ijoma Mangold, Die Zeit.- "A cross between Trainspotting and White Teeth." Silke Luhrmann - Literary translator, writer, editor, researcher.- "Jackie Thomae's novel is as funny as it is tragic, touching on topics like racism, family and love. It is about a bygone era - from the mid-1980s to 2017 - and is surprisingly topical. A very readable book with a variety of dimensions in which the reader can become immersed." Karolin Kolbe und Lena Stoenberg, Litaffin Blog