About sleep and insomnia, dreams and the ghosts of the past.

In the life of young scientist Mara Lux, almost everything revolves around the topic of sleep. The Londoner-by-choice is a leading researcher in this field, but at the same time she herself has been suffering from tormenting insomnia for many years. She fears her dreams, which sometimes seem to spill inexplicably into reality. Mara, who is not only rational through and through, but also likes to have everything under control, finds this very difficult.

She is hardly ever in Germany, her parents died young, so Mara is not a little surprised when one day she receives a message from a notary in Frankfurt: Someone wants to bequeath her a large, old manor house in the German provinces, anonymously. Mara believes it is a case of mistaken identity - and yet, having become curious, she travels to the small town, which is foreign to her, to take a look. She is astonished to discover that she is strangely connected to this place through her dreams.



The new novel by Melanie Raabe - about sleep and insomnia, about dreams and the ghosts of the past, about secrets and the loss of loved ones, about pausing and moving on.

Melanie Raabe was born in Jena in 1981. After graduating, she worked as a journalist during the day - and secretly wrote books at night. DIE FALLE was published in 2015, followed by DIE WAHRHEIT in 2016, DER SCHATTEN in 2018 and DIE WÄLDER in 2019. Her novels have been translated into 22 languages and several film adaptations are in the works. Melanie Raabe also runs a successful weekly podcast about creativity, "Raabe & Kampf", together with artist Laura Kampf. Melanie Raabe lives and works in Cologne. With "The Art of Disappearing", she leaves the realm of the traditional thriller for the first time and takes us into a world in which everything is possible and nothing can be taken for granted.

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