THE GOLDEN GLOVE

Fantastically dark, brilliantly funny and excruciatingly tragic, Heinz Strunk’s novel is the first to eschew his trademark autobiographical style. The name of his terrible hero is Fritz Honka, a name that still resonates chillingly with anyone who grew up in 1970s Germany. Honka was a serial killer of women, came from the lowest social strata and became infamous during his sensational trial in 1976. A pitiful figure, Honka was psychologically and physically scarred by the abuse and violence of his youth, and would pick up his victims in “The Golden Glove”, a notorious Hamburg drinking den. Strunk’s narrative dives deep into an infernal night world of alcoholism and derelict housing, whose inhabitants seem robbed of their humanity by a desolate life which knows no kindness.
Told with huge energy, great historical precision and profound compassion, this is a disturbing portrayal of a world in which both a notorious killer and his unhappy victims were well known in the courts. Yet the trajectory of this story also bisects the world of the wealthy a n d powe r f u l . Finally, rich and poor meet in a murky dive off Hamburg’s Reeperbahn, a melting pot of alcohol, sex, misery and crime.