Here’s a news story about a mystery story that became mystery and then turned into a messy story.
Apparently, the German publishing house S. Fischer will shortly release a book called “Der Sturm” (The Storm) by Per Johansson written in the style of popular Scandinavian crime fiction. The book revolves around the particularly bestial murder of a German journalist and editor in chief of a major newspaper.
What makes this particular publication so intriguing is that a German daily, Die Welt, did some in-depth sleuthing and found that the apparent author Per Johansson does not really exist. This despite the fact that the book’s cover features a photo of the ‘author’ and describes him as living in Berlin and working as a web designer. It also lists the name of a woman who ostensibly translated the book from Swedish to German. Until recently, the S. Fisher publishing house even carried a fictitious bio for Per Johansson on its web site. That bio has since been replaced but is still preserved in the publisher’s 2012 Autumn “Rights Guide” along with blurbs from Håkan Nesser and Orhan Pamuk of all people. (see screenshot below). The publisher of the book has since conceded that the author is indeed a pseudonym for an “author duo.”
Even stranger still, Die Welt found a number of similarities between the murder victim in the book and Frank Schirrmacher, an influential author, literary critic and co-publisher of one of the most widely read German newspapers, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), where he is responsible for the culture, science and other sections.
Die Welt also suspected that the author of the book is in fact Thomas Steinfeld, the culture editor of the FAZ’s rival Süddeutsche Zeitung, who also happens to be a former employee of Schirrmacher.
Steinfeld, in the meantime, has released a statement in which he outs himself as one the book’s co-authors yet insists that the book is not a roman à clef and that any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental in this fictional account. Schirrmacher himself would only say that he “does not read Swedish mystery novels.”
However, there are a number of media reports outlining the various similarities that seem anything but coincidental. These include that the victim wears an almost homonymous brand of shoes, has blond, curly hair, is about 50 years old, and has published articles on networks, robots and gene technology as well as book about the future and capitalism. All this, evidently matches characteristics of Frank Schirrmacher.
There are many layers of intrigue in all this about the German cultural scene, where Schirrmacher is a controversial and occasionally divisive figure. It’s not clear if this strange case of voodoo literature is a case of envy and revenge or a sophisticated marketing ploy or a bit of both. Needless to say, the German media is currently having a field day with this juicy story.
