The Bird Is a Raven. This item is unavailable.The Bird Is a Raven

From the gifted young author of Crazy (“A marvel of voice, humor and razor-sharp insight” –The San Diego Union-Tribune), an edgy, psychologically riveting novel about sex, love, and secrets.

Henry and Paul — young men still new to adulthood — are strangers when they find themselves sharing a sleeping compartment on a night train from Munich to Berlin. When they begin to talk, their stories appear to be variations on the same theme: kids adrift in the big city, relationships gone awry, young hearts broken. Both are disillusioned by their awkward journey from the innocence of childhood to the responsibilities expected of grown-up life. Henry is running away from a triangle of friendship that was becoming a dangerous ménage à trois. Paul is running away as well, but as the night unwinds and the train speeds north across the German landscape, his story turns ominous: desperate and lost, he has fallen in love with a prostitute who spurned him. What he reveals finally to his unsuspecting traveling companion goes far beyond the boundaries of postadolescent angst and into the darkest sphere of human behavior.

Fast-moving, immediate, shocking — The Bird Is a Raven is the work of a writer at the beginning of what promises to be a stellar career.

Benjamin Lebert was born in Freiburg, Germany in 1982.