Juli Zeh dares to tread where other German authors dare not. Question? Is it possible to befriend a neo-Nazi? Set in rural Brandenburg, where a left-wing city girl seeks respite from the pandemic, About People is about that - the people behind their political masks.

i had to DNF this book; it was actually unreadable. not sure if it was the translation but i would read a page and not have absorbed anything from it. a shame because it sounded so interesting!

“When did everything go so totally haywire?”

Julie Zeh’s About People is a remarkable novel set during the Pandemic. Thanks to comments here, I know that like-minded readers are somewhat jaded with “Pandemic novels.” Lisa, in particular, noted that some Pandemic novel plot threads are thin. And that brings me to About People, a novel that easily makes my best-of-year list.

About People is set in the Pandemic, but it addresses moral questions concerning beliefs, fanaticism, humanity and compassion. The book opens in 2020 with ad agency employee, 36-year-old Dora in Bracken which is located in Nordrhein-Westfalen in Germany. Dora moved from Berlin to rural Bracken with her dog, leaving a tepid relationship with a long-term boyfriend, Robert, behind.

Dora still wasn’t even sure she wanted to move to the countryside. All she knew was that she needed that house. Urgently. Even it it was just an idea. A mental survival technique. A hypothetical emergency exit from her own life.

Dora’s relationship with Robert, who works at an online magazine was initially good, and she “can’t remember when it all started” to go wrong. After 2015, Dora notes Robert’s friends “started snapping at one another,” over political and social issues. “Friends began sorting into new constellations. You’d meet up with some friends, but not with others. You’d unfriend certain people on Facebook, unfollow them on Instagram and Twitter and replace them with new connections.” Real differences emerged when Robert began a “climate-defender phase,” and he started to get upset with Dora’s “tiniest recycling mistakes, as if improper sorting were a criminal act.” At first, Dora admired Robert’s commitment, but his commitment slid into superiority as he begins lecturing Dora with statistics. “The world they had previously shared morphed into a suffocating corset of rigid rules,” and distance grows between them.

He saw Dora as an agent for throwaway society, consumer culture run amok, wasting energy, piling the garbage dumps ever higher.

It’s not that Dora disagreed with recycling; she didn’t need “convincing,” But it was his arrogance, his tone and “the rhetoric that paralyzed her.”

There’s a great section on the “energy” needed to produce a cotton tote vs a plastic bag, and at one point, Dora’s brain runs with the calculations as to whether or not she’s “done something to save the environment.” Dora and Robert had many scenes about recycling, but after Covid arrived, Robert discovered his true calling.

Fueled by fanaticism, Robert becomes a Covid “expert.”, and following lockdown, Dora’s life with Robert becomes suffocating. He rides around town on his bike saying he’s gathering info for his articles, but when they are at home together, they get on each other’s nerves. She takes her dog for walks in order to escape his criticism, but then:

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Robert informed her that he would no longer tolerate her walks. He spoke slowly and clearly as if Dora were somehow cognitively impaired.

In the months prior to lockdown in Germany, Dora quietly made forays into the countryside looking for the perfect property. The ‘perfect’ property is an old run-down house in Bracken on one acre. It seemed like “the next logical step of her adventurous life journey.” Bracken is in the district of Prignitz, and her father, Jojo, an eminent neurologist asks Dora “what do you plan to do out there among all the right wing nutjobs.?” She thinks he’s exaggerating. But the “so-called Clash of Civilizations really does exist. But it’s not between East and West. It’s between Berlin and Bracken. Between metropolis and province, center and perimeter, city and outskirts.”

Bracken is small:

The technical term is linear settlement, which means it’s your typical East German one-horse town. At its center lies a church overlooking the village square. There’s a bus stop, a firehouse, a mailbox, 284 inhabitant. 285 with Dora.

Dora meets her neighbour, Goth, a lanky anti-social man who says he’s the “village Nazi.” Dora thinks he’s joking, but then when some of Goth’s pals arrive and they all start singing Nazi songs, she understands that Goth was stating the truth.

Adjusting to living next door to a Nazi is one issue, but Dora is a city dweller who must adjust to country life. She’s ill-prepared for shopping which she learns must be planned with “military precision,” and shocked to find out that her neighbours vote for AfD. As she becomes more involved with her community, she realises that as a Berliner, she did not understand the issues faced by those in rural communities:

Every minute the bus doesn’t come is a minute gained for the right wing populists. The people in power can’t even get local public transit up and running, and now they want to abolish diesel?! That’s how anger turns into rage. And rage turns into hate.

Working in the ad industry, Dora is perfectly placed to understand how product branding is geared towards consumers who wish to wear their beliefs like medals of honour. I’m thinking of Guy de Bord here in the Society of the Spectacle: “The spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images.” T shirts, flags and window signs which signal our beliefs. Dora, however, is an independent thinker; she refuses to be swayed by political rhetoric:

Dora doesn’t like absolute truths or any supposed authority that relies on them. There’s something bristly deep within her, something that always wants to resist. She has no desire to fight to prove she’s right, and refuses to take part in any kind of groupthink.

About People is a amazing novel. Dora is in a relationship that is wrecked by her partner’s application of his intensified beliefs, and she moves to an area where voters don’t share her views. Dora is horrified by the idea that she has a Nazi for a neighbour, but stuck out in the country, Goth shows her some prickly kindness and Dora, once over her horror and fear, struggles to see his humanity. About People is a subversive novel as it tackles topical issues while establishing compassion for a Nazi. Dora wonders “who’s more carbon neutral, an activist crisscrossing Europe to attend rallies, or a stubborn grandma who doesn’t bother with recycling but has never set foot on a plane?” And that’s a question I’ve chewed over too.
Review copy. Translated by Alta L. Price

To be perfectly honest,reading this book was a little struggle for me,so as writing this review. I didn't hate the book but I didn't like or love it either. As a reader from Southeast Asia, I might not be the target audience of this book or maybe, some things got lost in translation that it failed to capture and engaged me as much as I expected it to. I got particularly fond of reading translated works this past year and the premise of this novel really intrigued me.
The plot of this book might be more complex than how I understood it because at the end, it just felt like reading a cozy small town novel with some political undertones. I hated that it felt that way for me because I believe this book has a message or a statement that I did not fully understand. Is it really about covid? or the political demographic of Germany?
I wish I had a clear answer for that,but I don't. If anything, this book nudged me and has me thinking of reading more about the country it was from.

Thirty-something Dora lives in a cramped Berlin apartment with her boyfriend Robert when the pandemic arrives. His obsession with a climate apocalypse does not pair well with her laid-back, creative style, and she copes by being passive-aggressive, such as tossing recyclables into the trash. After one rant too many, she decamps with her dog to a fixer-upper she secretly purchased in rural Bracken, an AfD party right-wing stronghold. The first neighbor she meets is Goth, who identifies himself as the village Nazi.

As Dora adjusts to her new rural lifestyle, tackling her sorely neglected new homesite and remote work, she slowly becomes acquainted with her neighbors. She couldn’t be more different than them: an urban progressive from an affluent upbringing while they struggle to make ends meet during the pandemic with little by way of a safety net. She will be forced to see life through their eyes, even test her assumptions about her moral high ground. When she learns why and how Goth came to be who he is, she says that she’s better than him, a hundred times better. Then she realizes that the sense of superiority is the “mother of all problems, a long-acting poison that devours all humanity from the inside.”

This book is an easy read but filled with weighty thoughts and reflections on today’s pressing issues. It will at the least make readers think before not thinking.

There have already been some Covid novels and I’m sure there will be more, but I feel that this will prove to be one of the best. Best-selling German author Julie Zeh has written a relatable, insightful and perhaps most importantly non-judgmental novel about the consequences of the pandemic – personal, political and social – on Dora, an advertising copywriter who escapes to the country when Covid hits and her relationship with her partner Robert breaks down, largely due to his increasing obsession with climate change. But her escape to a small rural village turns out to be equally problematic, especially when she discovers that her neighbour Goth is a self-proclaimed Nazi. Although Covid takes centre stage for much of the novel, it’s certainly not just about the pandemic, but more concerned with how we deal with our preconceptions, assumptions and prejudices when we find ourselves outside our comfort zone. Our firmly held opinions sometimes come up against other people’s opinions and ideologies and we have to take a step back and realise that not everything is a matter of black and white. I found this a very human book, a novel about acceptance and understanding, and how it’s not always easy to hold on to our moral certitudes. I’m not going to divulge the plot, or relate how Dora copes in her new environment, as I think the less the reader knows beforehand the better. I really enjoyed the book, finding it a truly compelling and intelligent exploration of the dilemmas world events beyond our control often force us to face. I also found it fascinating to read about Covid responses in another country. A great read.

Alright, let's talk "About People" by Juli Zeh, one of Germany's best writers of modern fiction. She takes us on a wild ride through the COVID-19 pandemic, but she's not just rehashing what we all went through. No, she dives deep into the messy, confusing bits of humanity.

Dora escapes the city life of Berlin and moves to the quiet of the Brandenburg countryside. She's running from the pandemic and her overly zealous climate-activist boyfriend. Once there, she gets a solid dose of the human spectrum. Her neighbors include Goth, the village Nazi, and his daughter Franzi, and gay florists who vote for the AfD (Germany's right-wing political party). Zeh's storytelling showcases that, deep down, we're all just trying to figure it out and get through. We're more alike than we are different.

"She thinks how little polarization there really is. No east and west, down and up, left or right. Neither paradise nor apocalypse, contrary to what the media and politics often portray. Instead, it's just people, standing together. People who like each other, some more, some less. Who come together and separate again."

The novel is a little dark, a little satirical (but not unkind), and more than anything it's about acceptance, understanding, and compassion. I empathized with all of the characters, even the ones I didn't like. If you're looking for a book that makes you think about society and our place in it, and makes you rethink your judgements, this is a good pick.

This was a German covid drama
Although I originally thought I was interested by the description, unfortunately I wasn't.
It was WAY WAY more political than I thought .. I know it's about covid but 🤯

First off this book takes place in Germany sooo why are we talking about Trump ?? .. just the go to for political books I guess ? 🤷
not super original.
I'm sorry I just couldn't get past the political overtones of this book .. it was too much.
Very stereotypical in so many ways.
Maybe I'm just an American over politics ? So this book was just blah to me.

The translator did an amazing job & I loved the dog .

#NetGalley #AboutPeople

I was not sure I wanted to read a pandemic themed novel, but Jul Zeh's "About People" changed my mind. It's an examination of what happens when everything is in chaos. How do we attempt to put order back in our lives? Can we put our lives back together after the unthinkable has happened? Zeh creates a story that centres around the trauma we face from our past, and how that trauma influences how we deal with a crazy world. This novel is hilarious and deeply engrossing.

Translated from German by Alta L. Price, About People by Julie Zeh (2023) is literary fiction exploring the themes of our times. It’s in the early stages of the pandemic when Dora flees the city, with the stay-at-home orders and her unsatisfactory relationship, for a rural life. Purchasing a house in Bracken, a village in the middle of nowhere, she yearns for open space and freedom. Working from home suits her as she gets to know the locals and the neighbour next door with his strident opinions. As Dora attempts to tame her garden and adapt to this very different place, incidents and people affect her in ways she cannot foresee. A moving tale of friendship, wit and insightful commentary with realistic characters and a four and a half stars read rating. The social and very private consequences of the pandemic are used to illustrate a heartful appeal to our shared humanity. With thanks to World Editions and the author, for an uncorrected advanced review copy for review purposes. As always, the opinions herein are totally my own, freely given and without inducement.

"About People" offers a unique exploration of human connections against the backdrop of a world in turmoil. Juli Zeh's novel delves into the life of a woman discontented with urban living and her partner's fervent environmental activism. Without consulting anyone in her circle, she purchases a house with land in a small village.
Her relocation coincides with the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, and initially, she grapples with solitude. Yet, as time unfolds, she gradually acquaints herself with a diverse cast of neighbors, each possessing their own eccentricities, from a burly nazi with a adorable girl to a gay couple with surprising political leanings.
The novel adeptly captures the peculiarities of life during this extraordinary period, painting a vivid picture that recalls my own experiences. However, the close bond the protagonist forms with her nazi neighbor strains credibility at times.
Juli Zeh skillfully navigates the complexities of human interaction, unveiling hidden layers of her characters' lives. The juxtaposition of political beliefs and personal connections challenges preconceived notions, serving as a poignant reminder of the complexities that define us.
While some aspects may lack credibility, About People remains a compelling narrative that prompts reflection on the intricacies of human relationships in times of turmoil.


"About People" ofrece una exploración única de las conexiones humanas con el telón de fondo de un mundo convulso. La novela de Juli Zeh se adentra en la vida de una mujer descontenta con la vida urbana y el ferviente activismo ecologista de su pareja. Sin consultar a nadie de su entorno, compra una casa con terreno en un pequeño pueblo.
Su traslado coincide con el inicio de la pandemia de coronavirus, y al principio se enfrenta a la soledad. Sin embargo, a medida que pasa el tiempo, va conociendo a un variado elenco de vecinos, cada uno con sus propias excentricidades, desde un fornido nazi con una niña adorable hasta una pareja gay con sorprendentes inclinaciones políticas.
La novela capta hábilmente las peculiaridades de la vida durante este periodo extraordinario, pintando un cuadro vívido que recuerda mis propias experiencias. Sin embargo, el estrecho vínculo que la protagonista establece con su vecino nazi resulta a veces poco creíble.
Juli Zeh navega hábilmente por las complejidades de la interacción humana, desvelando capas ocultas de la vida de sus personajes. La yuxtaposición de creencias políticas y conexiones personales desafía las nociones preconcebidas, sirviendo de conmovedor recordatorio de las complejidades que nos definen.
Aunque algunos aspectos pueden resultar poco creíbles, "About People" sigue siendo una narración convincente que incita a la reflexión sobre los entresijos de las relaciones humanas en tiempos de agitación.

“About People” is about a women who leaves the city life of Berlin during the COVID-19 pandemic to live in a small town in Germany. While there she has to navigate many of the same challenges that we all did during the pandemic: social distancing protocols, meeting others when any form of human interaction is discouraged, and navigating the change from working in an office to working from home. In the end, though, this is a beautifully literary exploration of the assumptions that we make about others and how those assumptions not only disconnect us from our fellow human beings but also make it harder for us to find peace and happiness.

I found this book to be an uplifting novel about eliminating the figurative boundaries between us all—boundaries that were certainly made literal during COVID but that existed long before then. Julie Zeh’s prose as rendered by her translator Alta L. Price was breathtakingly precise and beautiful. I’ve often wondered how those from cultural contexts different from my own navigated the shared global experience of the pandemic. This book helped me better understand the personal, political, and social dynamics of the pandemic in Germany all while introducing me to one of Germany’s most beloved contemporary writers.

Well, this was something very different from what I’ve read lately and I really liked it a lot. It is set in Germany during the COVID pandemic and has a motley bunch of very interesting and unusual characters who filled up the book.

This is my first time reading anything from Germanys number one Author but definitely not the last. Dora and her dog are desperate to escape the city life of Berlin and especially her vocal boyfriend and his rants on the pandemic and everything else under the sun. She escapes to a very small country town called Bracken where she has bought an old house on a big block of land.

Pretty quickly we meet key characters, firstly her next door neighbour who announces himself as the village Nazi. Not what you expect at all. Dora takes this in her stride and over time a fascinating dynamic occurs between the two. I can’t mention much about that as it will ruin the entire book but nothing is as it seems. Other characters quickly enter her world and I actually loved every single one of them. Juli knows how to bring characters to life and has created a book that challenges stereotypes.

The book is full with so much from political views, biases, judgement, misconceptions and more. It’s absolutely fascinating. It’s a story and a half. I’m struggling to say much more as it’s one of those that you don’t want to give a lot away on. I felt much emotion reading it from laughter to sadness.

Dora works as an advertising copywriter and ends up of course working from home die to the pandemic. The Author very cleverly incorporates brilliant concepts and ideas that come from Dora’s imagination but also speaks of events going on. I had a lot of genuine smiles reading it. I loved many characters especially a young girl who worms her way into Dora’s world and heart (and her dog is mad for this child too). Her story is very powerful and moving.

The reveal! Oh my God, I was stunned and cannot express how clever this writer is. You won’t see it coming and it changes so much. This is very much a book about why we should never assume, never judge a book by its cover and the power of always having an open mind. The book is filled with so much good stuff. Absolutely hooked me in and I couldn’t put it down,

I do not understand the reviews that describe this book in a really negative light, to be honest I think the point has been missed. This is a book about human nature and what we value most in life. I highly recommend this. My review has not done it justice as I don’t want to throw in any spoilers. 4 solid stars. If you are wanting something different to read this will do the job nicely. Very clever penmanship and I can see why Juli is a bestselling German writer.

I fell in love with the heroine of this book: Dora, a young woman in her thirties working in advertising. She has a great love for space exploration and always has a tag-line in her head. She lives with Robert in Berlin but things have changed in their relationship. We are only privy to Dora’s point of view but from her perspective her gentle Robert had turned into a climate defending fundamentalist. When the Pandemic hit and lock-down kicked in, his political activism paired with his slavish obedience and enforcement of lock-down rules made living with him harder and harder, so she decides to leave.

She moves to a village called Bracken, a name somehow suggesting the back-waters of society. This move shakes her to the core. In this completely new environment she, who distrusts all absolute truths, the rhetoric that comes with them and the authorities that rely on them, realises quickly that she herself harbours steadfast ideas that now become challenged. Her interactions with the people she gets to know make her realise that nothing is quite what it seems.

Much to her horror, most of her new neighbours support the right-wing populist party AfD and during her dealings with them she learns quickly that nothing is simple with right-wing populists. It is the arrogance of the righteous that puts all of them in the same category without understanding what drives them. In her previous live it was easy to pick a side. In Bracken she realises, life is not like that – it is complicated, multi-layered, and always About People and what makes them tick. These are the people she learns to appreciate and love.

This is a heart-warming story, in places quite sentimental with a deep belief that people can change when ideology is put on the back burner and humanity is allowed to come to the fore. It is also a very controversial book given that the local village nazi gets so much air space and is dealt with quite sympathetically. I loved it.

I am grateful to NetGalley and World Editions for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This book took me awhile to get into but when I did I loved it. It sis set during Covid and Dora leaves Berlin to go to a smaller town outside the city. Dora grows a lot throughout the story through the relationships she builds with her new neighbours. It describes life during the lockdowns and way the different personalities dealt with it. The author describes things in detail which added to my experience.

Thank you to NetGalley, the author and the publisher for an advanced copy.

A disturbingly simplistic – bordering on preposterous - take on contemporary Germany and its deep-seated, political divides. And a challenging novel for me to talk about, mainly because there’s no comfortable position on offer here for readers like me who don’t happen to be white. Juli Zeh’s plot’s relatively straightforward. Dora, a woman in her mid-thirties is unhappy with her life in Berlin, a place that’s become “too strident” for her. After years chasing material success through her work in the advertising industry, the Covid lockdown leads to a confrontation with her partner that forces Dora to make a decision about the future. She takes her dog and moves to a small, isolated, town in what was formerly East Germany. Once there she’s surprised to find the area is an AfD stronghold and that Goth her new, next-door neighbour is a fully-fledged neo-Nazi.

However, all is not lost, after years of being happily childfree, Dora quickly succumbs to the charms of Goth’s neglected, small daughter and then for Goth’s. Goth habitually surrounds himself with people who tell “uncomfortably” racist jokes – which become more grating after Dora sees a video of George Floyd’s murder yet not apparently uncomfortable enough for Dora to actually take a stand and challenge them. In his spare time Goth abuses “immigrants” and gay men, and even manages to squeeze in the odd attack on antifa activists but Dora comes to a realisation that he’s essentially a good-natured soul – even more deserving of sympathy when revealed to have terminal cancer. He’s also less of a pain for Dora than her fiercely environmentalist ex.

For over 200 pages I kept thinking I must have missed some vital statement or satirical spin which would overturn my negative impressions of Zeh’s narrative. But it seems Zeh’s central “argument” is centred on the supposed revelation that people are complicated and if Germans could just set aside their pesky, political differences, they might all be able to get along – not quite sure how that works if your local Goth would be more likely to petrol bomb your house than fill it with lovingly crafted, gifts but maybe that’s my bias talking! A bestseller in Germany, Zeh’s novel is more than competent in terms of style, her characters are pretty one-dimensional but she makes some interesting observations about contemporary German society, and the narrative overall is fluid if slow paced – although the references to Heidegger were a bit unfortunate. I liked the dog but other than that I just wasn’t the right fit for this in any way, shape or form. Translated by Alta L. Price.

Im still a bit unsure about this book, The writing and translation were good, and I'd thought I was ready for a Covid book particularly set a different country to the UK. Now I'm not sure I was, as people the world over obviously had similarly diverse ways of coping with lockdowns etc.
At its core though this was a book about human relationships, both with each other, nature and the environment and this was the aspect I became most interested in.
Thank you to netgalley and world editions for an advance copy of this book.

I'm torn about this book.

On one hand, having experienced all lockdowns in Germany, this book felt all too familiar. "About People" is easy to read and I find the translation striking. The mixture of German sociopolitical climate and Dora's inner turmoil definitely makes this book intriguing and thought-provoking.

On the other hand, I'm having a difficult time grasping how it concludes that "everybody hates somebody" since the Nazi next door is a friendly neighbor, a loving father. and is terminally ill--justifying the fact that he never missed a chance to openly hate and attack foreigners. Though I understand nothing is ever as easy as black and white, this isn't something I can just ignore.

I finished this book a few days ago and still can’t make up my mind about it. I found it interesting to learn about Every day life in Germany during the pandemic and noted the similarities between there and the UK and I also really appreciated the translation which appeared seemless to me. However I’m not sure there was much of a story. I kept thinking where is this going’ and if anything was going to happen or whether it was just a comment on the rural society during an extraordinary period. I know this book and it’s author have received many accolades but I think it wasn’t my cup of tea.

Written by Germany's #1 bestselling author Juli Zeh, About People takes place in the middle of lockdown in spring 2020 and subtly describes the social and very private consequences of the pandemic.
Fleeing stay-at-home orders in the big city, Dora and her dog move to the countryside to sit out the pandemic. She knows that Bracken, a village in the middle of nowhere, isn't the idyll most city dwellers dream of, but she's desperate for space and a change of scene. The quaint old house she's saved up for needs work, weeds have taken over the yard, and her skinhead neighbor fits all the stereotypes.
Just what is Dora really looking for? Distance from her boyfriend Robert, whose climate activism has crossed into obsession? Refuge from her inner turmoil? Clarity on how the whole world got so messed up? As Dora tries to keep her demons in check, unexpected things start happening all around her. Juli Zeh's epic new novel explores our present predicaments, biases, weaknesses, and fears, but-above all-it reveals the strengths that come to light when we dare to be human.