The Method

Translated from the original German by Sally-Ann Spencer

2014 Longlist

The new novel from one of the hottest young European voices and author of the critically acclaimed Dark Matter.

Mia Holl lives in a state governed by The Method, where good health is the highest duty of the citizen. Everyone must submit medical data and sleep records to the authorities on a monthly basis, and regular exercise is mandatory. Mia is young and beautiful, a successful scientist who is outwardly obedient but with an intellect that marks her as subversive. Convinced that her brother has been wrongfully convicted of a terrible crime, Mia comes up against the full force of a regime determined to control every aspect of its citizens’ lives.
The Method, set in the middle of the twenty-first century, deals with pressing questions: to what extent can the state curtail the rights of the individual? And does the individual have a right to resist? Juli Zeh has written a thrilling and visionary book about our future, and our present.

(From Publisher)

About the Author

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

Librarians’ Comments

Juli Zeh’s novel, part science-fiction, part political thriller, set in the mid-21st century, presents a vision of a future that plays on our current obsession with health and surveillance. Juli Zeh provides a deep insight into our over-structured, over-quantified times.

This anti-Utopian novel brilliantly describes a society, which apparently is perfect. Citizens of this state are being threatened by a potential come-back of the dreadful 20th century. In this state, everything has its place and time. People, without exception are healthy; physically and psychically. Simply a nightmare. The author skilfully connected the totalitarian atmosphere of Nineteen Eighty-Four by Orwell, with a mixture of hopelessness, resembling the classical The Trial by Kafka.