Fast-paced and humorous, Cordula Simon's biting novel describes a future that is worryingly close to our present. Surveillance and self-regulation by means of an implanted log have become common place – those who don't participate attract suspicion. When Sandor, the weatherman on Honest Airwaves reveals the destructive intentions of the Tolerance Union while on air, the regime's response is merciless. He is persecuted relentlessly, just like the "Wolves of Pripyat", an alleged terrorist group that fights against the Consul who reigns over the Union with supposed benevolence. Simon's sweeping novel is a hallucinatory vision of a future in which even the longed-for freedom is no more than a digitally generated illusion, a particularly cunning trick of the system.

“Bad people are always fine.” With this mantra and other cynical remarks, the narrator has made himself the revered as well as hated focal point of a bored upper class clique. What nobody knows is that he lives off badly paid mini jobs and a very unusual gift: alcohol turns him into a mind reader. He’s a fraud who exploits the stupidity of the shallow hipster gang, but he’s also a charming improvisation artist who finds true love in the glamorous Tarán. Driven by necessity, he entangles himself in an increasingly absurd web of lies, in which tattooed Mafia bosses and wild car chases are part of everyday life. But this balancing act only succeeds until Mr Neubauer turns up...

Baku, Azerbaijan, spring 2011: the city is in uproar, protests against the authoritarian regime are growing louder. In the midst of it are Ali and Nino, Frida and Che, two young couples fighting not only against state repression but for their love, for freedom and self-determination, for happiness and a life they can call their own. Yet Verena Mermer evokes more than just the political struggles and everyday life in one of the last dictatorships on Europe’s borders. Her wonderful debut also plays an enthralling game with its characters, with the times and places, the myths of revolution and love and lures us into the labyrinth of poetic invention.

Every Saturday, three superheroines meet in a run-down café called Sette Fontane. There is Mascha, the brave supportive one, Direktorka, the inexperienced one ready for adventure, and Marija's granddaughter who has a flexible conscience and revenge in her veins. The three have dark, chaotic powers and want to bring justice to Vienna's suburbs as they plan a futile uprising of the middle class. "Lightening of Fate" and "Annihilation" are the weapons that grandma Marija already successfully used to destabilize an entire country. After failed appearances and painful years of learning in Berlin, Belgrade, Sarajevo and other cities, our three superheroines ultimately find triumph in the darkest of all happy ends.