On the Edge: A Novel

This psychological thriller with a masterly, pulse-quickening plot revolves around two seemingly very different men, who ultimately have much more in common than they realize.

Thomas Clarin is a divorce lawyer whose profession has fostered a profound and abiding distrust of marriage. Rejecting the deeper things in life, he embraces the superficial and takes pleasure in one lighthearted affair after another. The older Thomas Loos, on the other hand, is a classics scholar and recent widower who cherishes the notion of true love while he openly resents the modern world around him. With Clarin’s flirtatious, roving eye and Loos’s bitter grief over the death of his wife, Bettina, it would seem that these men are from two different worlds. But after a chance meeting in the idyllic Swiss village of Montagnola, the two strike up a conversation that reveals unnerving—and ultimately heartbreaking—coincidences.

Widely acclaimed as a gem of contemporary German literature, On the Edge is a powerful look at love and loss that begins innocently, then grabs the reader and refuses to let go.