Book Description

For a young man newly arrived in Berlin, a chance encounter with a mysterious Lebanese singer offers the excitement he craves. But after just one intoxicating date she disappears. Undeterred, he tries to track her down – a search that draws him into the city’s alternative scene, an exotic world of communes, artist collectives, politicised flash mobs, transvestite cabaret acts and shisha dens.Instead of him finding her, she finds him and a faltering relationship begins – but with it comes a startling revelation. And when those close to her start to die or disappear, he realises that her love might come at a terrible cost. This narrative dovetails with two unearthed voices from the city’s past. One is presented in a series of letters written twenty years ago by an East German border guard to his lover on the other side of the Wall. The second is in the form of diary entries written by a teenage girl, soon after the fall of Nazi Berlin, living in daily fear of discovery by Soviet troops wreaking revenge on the city.The Killing Strip paints a vivid portrait of a city and the disparate people who inhabit it, while exploring the notions of love, sacrifice, freedom and the walls that exist inside us all.