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Winner of the 2017 German Crime Fiction Prize
Moses wants one thing: to get home, where his girlfriend and a cold beer are waiting for him. But his car breaks down on an empty street, not a single human being in sight. Moses slips into The Pines, a gated community, in hopes to find help from a university classmate who lives there. Over there, in the “white” world, everything seems calm, orderly, safe. But once inside, he feels like more of an outsider than ever. And he makes a terrible mistake.
Mistaken identities, racial profiling, and class politics form the backdrop of this intense thriller. The Wall tackles the issues of gun violence, racism, and exclusion in contemporary South Africa—problems that are equally relevant in the United States.
"Annas works like a film director, bombarding us with shot and counter-shot. The reader races to the explosion… an actual shootout. THE WALL is a fantastic, yet very funny, novel... Fast, hard and dangerous. A cheetah in book form." Die Welt (Germany)
"Fear and distrust of anyone who counts as 'the other.' [...]…jam-packed with action, thrills and suspense. A brilliant success!" Deutschlandradio Kultur (Germany)
"Ducking, hiding, running - these are what drive the novel's dynamics, its minute-by-minute choreography. Instincts dictate behaviors. In this case: prejudice, aversions, and racism." Süddeutsche Zeitung (Germany)
Before writing novels, Max Annas worked as a journalist. A renowned film critic, his first novel, The Farm, is currently under film production in South Africa.
“[A] refreshing snappy crime caper” —The Herald (South Africa)
“[P]olished prose lifts the tale up, raises the tension step by step” —NY Journal of Books
"[Annas] turns this cat and mouse game into a life and death struggle that catches you up in its drama and suspense." —Lively Arts magazine
“The Wall is a breathless, irrepressible thriller that packs a punch.” —NB Magazine
"The Wall was a thrilling chase through an unusual and surprisingly frightening setting: a well-to-do gated community in South Africa [...] Moses is a compelling every-man protagonist, caught up in a case of mistaken identity, and the cinematic quality to the story telling takes you running right alongside him as he eludes capture." —Natalie Draper, librarian Richmond Public Library (Virginia)
"75 Notable Translations of 2019," World Literature Today
"The story takes place over just two short hours — filled with twists and turns and non-stop chases along the way. The Wall is an intense thriller, with second-by-second near misses [...] An exploration of racial profiling, class, exclusion, and chance." Shelf Unbound Magazine
Praise for the German edition of The Wall
"Annas works like a film director, bombarding us with shot and counter-shot. From 115 occasionally fragmented perspectives, the reader races to the explosion in "The Pines." An actual shootout. In actuality, THE WALL is one solitary shootout... THE WALL is a fantastic, yet very funny, novel... Fast, hard and dangerous. A cheetah in book form." Die Welt
"Fear and distrust of anyone who counts as 'the other.' [...] For all this, Max Annas needs only 221 pages, jam-packed with action, thrills and suspense. A brilliant success!" Deutschlandradio Kultur
"Ducking, hiding, running - these are what drive the novel's dynamics, its minute-by-minute choreography. Instincts dictate behaviors. In this case: prejudice, aversions, and racism." Süddeutsche Zeitung
"Max Annas' thriller mesmerizingly elegant in its composition. Lightfooted, though never a lightweight." Frankfurter Rundschau
"Private security, police, a pair of thieves: a witch's cauldron bubbling with paranoia and racism. Grotesque to the power of ten, action that cuts to the quick." Die Zeit
"Although the novel takes place in a very concretely described South Africa, because of its [thematic] constellation, it carries global relevance. In the end, it is about outside and inside, about inclusion and exclusion, about the devastating impact of racism in which there are only losers, about hysterical, ultimately uncontrollable violence as the presumed Ultima Ratio of fear and distrust of 'the other.' The wall does not provide protection against the realities of the world. It merely produces more conflicts, more violence, more suffering. It becomes the overarching metaphor that is connected to concepts like "Fortress Europe," border walls, and even Donald Trump's Mexican wall project, without ever becoming overbearing in its association." - Thomas Woertche, Deutschlandradio Kultur
"Max Annas possesses an astonishing ability for packing clever plots into concentrated, riveting thrillers that don't have a single extra gram of fat on their ribs." - Ulrich Noller, Westdeutscher Rundfunk
"We are live as Annas tells his story in short, breathless sentences and rapidly changing perspectives in real time, all within 220 crisp pages. And this is not achieved at the cost of details or descriptions of the visual landscape or personal relationships. To the contrary... More this time than in his other novel, Annas has borrowed with relish from the great film stylists. The labyrinth motif and the "wrong man": taken from Hitchcock. The accidental doppelgaenger, the harmless crooks (the pair of thieves) who end up way over their heads in a situation in which a deep freezer plays a role, a lost suitcase full of money found by an extremely needy bystander, and the final death dance depicted in something like a time loop: Sam Peckinpah, Quentin Tarantino and the Coen Brothers are very clearly waving from behind the backdrop... You would not do any disservice to Max Annas' thriller if you could just as easily imagine it playing out in Dallas, Baton Rouge or St. Paul." - Christiane Mueller-Lobeck, Die Tageszeitung