The Easy Life is the boiled-down essence of our present - painful, funny, brutally accurate
Jan and Kathrin used to have it all; they floated through a world that was mostly kind to the beautiful couple. But those days are over. The world around them is changing too fast, while they themselves feel nothing but stagnation, trapped in the conventions of marriage and bourgeois life. Kathrin, who used to be a hyped writer, now ekes out a living as a substitute teacher and attends a sex party in an attempt to feel herself again. Jan, a famous TV journalist, is plagued by an anonymous blackmailer who sends nude photos of him from his days as a boarding school student. While her husband panics about the possibility that his terrible secret could come to light, Kathrin lusts after her daughter’s gorgeous and mysterious boyfriend, who, of all things, is also her student.
After his autofictional novel The World at My Back, which was shortlisted for the German Book Prize and translated into 22 languages, Thomas Melle’s new book takes literary stock of a society driven by longing for the easy life.
