On their heels is a new terrorist organization called the Empty Hearts, a group unlike any Britta and Babak have encountered before. Then The Bridge's database is stolen, driving Britta, Babak, and their latest recruit into hiding. Using a complex candidate-identifying algorithm designed by Babak, a brilliant programmer and Britta's only employee, The Bridge has effectively cornered the market, and terrorism never takes place without Britta's services-which is why news of a thwarted suicide attack in Leipzig comes as a shock. But her legitimate business is connected to a secret and far more lucrative operation known as The Bridge, an outfit that supplies terrorist organizations looking to employ suicide bombers.

Britta, a wife, mother, and successful businesswoman, ignores the daily news and concentrates on her family and her work running a clinic specializing in suicide prevention. With their democracy facing the wrecking ball, most well-off Germans turn inward, focusing on their own lives.

There's a global financial crisis, armed conflict, and mass migration, and an ultrapopulist movement governs in Germany.

A prescient political and psychological thriller ripped from tomorrow's headlines, by one of Germany's most celebrated contemporary novelists A few short years from now, the world is an even more uncertain place than it is today, and politics everywhere is marching rightward: Trump is gone, but Brexit is complete, as is Frexit.

Empty hearts juli zeh