In Letter, a suburb of Hannover, you can't become an adult, you only grow old.
Therefore, Hermann Strauchler flees to Munich where he meets Svetlana, a Latvian pianist. Hermann wants Svetlana and he will loose her, for in her league family tragedies don't end up in therapies but in European history books. He moves over to Berlin. However post-iron-curtain times are bad for righteous men. The Punch and Judy show made up of lame, arrant deceit, all this digital Biedermeier disgusts him. Until he falls in love again.

Hermann fathers a child, fails in his relationship, skids into an obsession, is abandoned – by his friends, by hope and spirit – and concentrates his life more and more on writing a letter to his great love, Svetlana. After finishing the letter Hermann is completely isolated and worn down.

As though year after year he had failed in a huge class in a monstrous village grammar school. But he wants to prove once that life is a work of art - a universal work of art composed of verve, precision and courage. Hermann has nothing left to lose. He plans to find his great youthful love, kidnap her and read the letter to her. Six days prior to Sylvester. In an out-of-the-way hunting cabin…

 

Frank Jankowski was born in 1963 in Gifhorn, Germany. In Munich and Berlin he studied, among other subjects, philology and theatre science. A passionate photo designer, he writes plays and movie scripts. Letter was his first novel. He lives and works in Berlin.