La Fille Sans Qualites, Paperback Book, By: Juli Zeh

In the early 2000s, in a last-ditch German high school, the perverted game of two pupils ended in a bloodbath. Disempowered, the lawyer who was entrusted with the case undertakes to write the story of the three protagonists, their meeting, the beginnings of the game, its development until the eruption of violence. Ada (fourteen) and Alev (eighteen) were born during the Gulf War; they grew up with images of the Balkan conflict and those of September 11 or the Madrid bombings. Ada, self-proclaimed child of nihilism, embodies the zeitgeist; she is a "girl without qualities", who places efficiency above all other virtues and has no esteem for adults. This ambitious novel, perfectly mastered and formidably contemporary propelled its author to the forefront of the European literary scene. In France, he was acclaimed by critics and received the Cevennes prize for the European novel.