A highly acclaimed and widely discussed bestseller by one of the most acclaimed contemporary authors.
What could drive five rational people to murder? Richard manages to join an elite group of five classical Greek students at university and enjoys the idyll of intellectual friendship in a closed group. He finds the subsequent disintegration of belonging all the more pressing and sets out to find out what could have caused it. When did the intoxication with life and knowledge turn into destructive enough forces to drive essentially sympathetic heroes to crime?
"I don't consider myself a villain. Whenever I read in the paper about murders being committed, I'm always struck by the stubborn one, an almost touching confidence, that all those serial stranglers perverted pedophiles and depraved criminals of all kinds refuse to recognize evil, that is hidden in them, and even feel compelled to subscribe to a certain false notion of decency:, I am basically a very decent person."