Das Philosophenschiff

With this major work, Michael Köhlmeier continues in the footsteps of his bestseller Two Gentlemen on the Beach. Architect Anouk Perleman-Jacob invites a writer to her 100th birthday and asks him to write a novel about her life. Born in St Petersburg, she experienced the Bolshevik terror and, on Lenin’s orders, she was deported as a young girl with her family together with other intellectuals on one of the so-called ‘philosopher ships. The ship was drifting on the Gulf of Finland for five days and nights when suddenly one last passenger was brought on board and sent into exile: Lenin himself.