Niklas Kalf travels to New York with his wife for the first time. He is working on a biography about the Jewish emigrant Eugen Meerkaz. But on his third day in the city, the first anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre, Liz vanishes without a trace. A telephone call confirms his terrible suspicion. Liz has been kidnapped. Kalf is forced to search for material relating to some dark secret in the life of Eugen Meerkaz. Kalf’s desperate search turns into a journey into the innermost realms of the country and into the emotional world of a European abroad. The Texan town of Marfa, Central Park, a bar on the roof of the Standard Hotel in LA, a deserted cinema, a villa on the Pacific coast, a mud hut on a prairie
Thomas Hettche paints a picture of a familiar and alien country in which his protagonist is confronted with loneliness and death. Niklas Kalf is sucked into a maelstrom which almost leads him to betray his wife and child. But then he is tracked down and forced to take action.
The best-selling author of “Der Fall Arbogast” has achieved a masterpiece with “Woraus wir gemacht sind”. It is a German novel, showing the development of Niklas Kalf, set in the USA and it captures the fascination of the country in wonderful images and also raises important questions about the reason for being and the responsibility of love. With the suspense of a spellbinding thriller, it grips the reader from the very first page.
