Martin Suter Libri

Konrad Lang, a man in his 60s, is haunted by the images of his early childhood, while he forgets his immediate past. Simone, the newcomer to the family, takes pity on Konrad and threatens to uncover secrets the family would like to be forever hidden.

A refined page-turner about the international art market that probes the darker recesses of the heart.

"At first, they put Konrad's absentmindedness down to an immoderate fondness for alcohol. For years he had been a benign parasite on the Koch family, first as the childhood playmate of Thomas, heir to the Koch family fortune, later as caretaker of the Koch family holiday villa on Cofu. And they, in their turn, had used him as the mood took them. But when the villa burns down because of Konrad's forgetfulness, Elvira Senn, the matriarch of the Koch family, puts him on a strict regime. No longer allowed his daily tipple, Konrad recovers and even falls in love again. But then his condition deteriorates. He can't find his way out of the supermarket, let alone his way home. Soon Konrad doesn't even recognize his new lover. Alzheimer's, the disease that turns the people closest to the sufferer into total strangers, has taken hold. As he loses his present he regains his far past, and this is what Elvira Senn fears the most. As they watch and wait for him to rewind to the crucial moment, his life is in danger from more than the debilitating disease..."--Publisher's description

Video journalist Jonas Brand is on a rail journey from Zurich to Basel when stock trader Paolo Contini appears to throw himself from the train to his death. Brand sets his footage of the aftermath of the incident aside to investigate a strange coincidence: two 100-Swiss franc banknotes bearing the same serial number have come into his possession. Sensing an opportunity to graduate from celebrity journalism to serious investigation, he has banknotes analysed, with bizarrely contradictory and fatal results.