> Skip to content
  • Published: 1 July 2010
  • ISBN: 9781409078951
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 336

Dark Matter




A startling philosophical thriller from an immensely gifted young star of European fiction.

Sebastian and Oskar have been friends since their days studying physics at university, when both were considered future Nobel Prize candidates. But after their graduation, their lives took very different paths; while Oskar holds a prestigious research post in Geneva, Sebastian worries that he hasn't lived up to his intellectual promise, having chosen marriage and fatherhood as an exit strategy.

A few days after a particularly heated argument between the two men, Sebastian leaves his son sleeping in the back seat while he goes into a service station. When he returns, the car has disappeared without trace. His phone rings and a voice informs him that in order to get his son back he must kill a man. As Sebastian's life unravels, the only person he can safely reach out to is Oskar...

  • Published: 1 July 2010
  • ISBN: 9781409078951
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 336

About the author

Juli Zeh

Juli Zeh was born in 1974 and lives in Brandenburg. She studied International Law, has worked with the UN in New York, and completed her studies in Creative Writing. Juli has won numerous awards, including the German Book Prize, the international Per Olov Enquist Award and the French Prix Cévennes for Best European Novel. One of Europe's best young writers, her work has been translated into thirty languages.

Also by Juli Zeh

See all

Praise for Dark Matter

Dark Matter by Juli Zeh - a much-acclaimed German writer - is the kind of crime novel often described as philosophical, literary, psychological or even intellectual...That is no bad thing, but only if well executed, as Dark Matter undoubtedly is...Unusual and intriguing

Marcel Berlins, The Times

A clever and truly entertaining read

The Independent

A compelling novel, thrilling yet profound...This book makes for a wonderful read, gripping until the last page. A masterpiece!

Financial Times Deutschland

A compulsive read ... ingenious and deftly-handled

New Humanist

A thrilling read as well as a terrific mental workout

Laura Wilson, Guardian

An intelligent an beautifully crafted existential thriller ... Zeh's lyricism and intellect lend the book a depth often lacking in mainstream thrillers

Big Issue

Clever and gripping

Boyd Tonkin, Independent Summer Reads

Every chapter is taut, suspenseful, almost Hitchcock-esque. Zeh's style is fluent but also elegantly sparse... An absolute gem of a book.

The Bookbag

From every angle - character study, philosophical discussion or straightforward plot - it shines with crystalline intensity, and so far as one can tell, nothing is lost in the translation. Complex and supremely elegant, this is a book to relish

Joanna Hines, Guardian

Interesting and original novel

Literary Review

It is certainly the best novel I've read so far this year, and should mark Zeh as one of Europe's brightest younger novelists

Crime Time

One might think that such perfection, such erudition must leave the reader untouched...but it does not. For that, Zeh's labyrinth is built too cleverly, its corridors are adorned with witty elements, her sentences are of extraordinary brilliance

Die Welt

This is a book and a half

Giles Broadbent, Wharf

Zeh constructs an impressive matrix of information for each of her key players and provides descriptions that are vivid and original ... Her often unexpected imagery is precise and pithy ... this philosophical thriller is well paced; one turns the pages impatient for the denouement

Times Literary Supplement