School of Violence

Frank Beck is 38, divorced, and the father of a twelve-year-old daughter. He is also insecure, dissatisfied, and burnt out. Nadja, the intelligent and unreachable seventeen-year-old, on the other hand, seems infused with a self-assured calmness. Hardly surprising then that Beck feels drawn to her. But what does Nadja want from him? Are the others right in assuming a secret student/teacher affair? Beck receives anonymous threats that lead to escalating violence...

After the success of his first novel, Wie man's nimmt, Norbert Niemann presents the story of an amour fou which is, at the same time, a precise study of our modern society. A society in which communication between generations seems impossible. Beck despairs over the fact that the students he confronts every day seem to live in a different world. Is it possible to overpower speechlessness with love?

"Niemann can do what apparently nobody else can do", a reviewer stated, "in presenting a contemporary subject by contemporary means." In Schule der Gewalt he condenses reality in an upsetting, gripping and tension-laden novel that impresses with its narrative and intellectual density.