Moor

Dion Katthusen is thirteen and growing up fatherless in a tiny village in northern Germany in the early 1970s. Stutterer and only child, ostracized by his peers, he finds solace in collecting dragonflies in a moor full of myths and legends. At the end of his childhood, he begins to tell his story of his deep desire for faultless speech and of his relationship with his mother, an unsuccessful painter who has compensated for her failure in art and life through her unhindered relationship with her son. But like the swampy earth that surrounds them, Dion s speech is full of fissures and holes. And nature, though sublime, can also be terribly cruel. Moor is a novel about what we do to escape loneliness. About all the demands we make of love, even as we hurt those around us in a misguided attempt to bear our own suffering. Linguistically powerful, visually evocative and bold, it boasts a narrative voice learnt from the forces of nature, a voice arisen from the ground beneath the reader s feet. "