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WORK TITLE: Cut
WORK NOTES: trans by Sharmila Cohen
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 1968
WEBSITE:
CITY: Cologne
STATE:
COUNTRY: Germany
NATIONALITY: German
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born 1968 in Cologne, Germany. Married to a psychologist.
EDUCATION:Studied German studies, theater, film, and television.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer. Owner of a television production company. Interned at a Czech film-production company.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Marc Raabe is a German writer. He was born in Cologne, Germany, in 1968 and grew up in Erftstadt, a small town near Cologne. Raabe’s passion for books began in childhood. He loved reading as a boy and would stay up late into the night devouring books. As a teen, Raabe took an interest in films and filmmaking. When he was fifteen, he began making films with a friend. While Raabe was still attending school, filmmaking became his priority. The two friends submitted their films to film contests. After high school, Raabe applied to a film school in Munich. Although he made it to the last round of thirty applicants, he was ultimately not accepted into the program. Following this experience, Raabe moved to Prague, where he interned with a Czech film-production company.
After interning with the Czech film-production company, Raabe began attending college, focusing on German studies, theater, film, and television. He decided to leave school to rent an office in Cologne with a friend and open a production company. Raabe has been working with the production company for two decades. With the company, he works as a cutter, graphic artist, implementer, editor, and managing director. The productions Raabe and his partner create include magazine contributions, trailers, introductions, and documentaries.
Cut
Raabe spent three and a half years working on Cut, published originally in 2012 in German under the name Schnitt. The book opens with eleven-year-old Gabriel in the midst of a terrifying discovery. A horrible crime has occurred in his family home, and he is witness to it. His parents are murdered, and his house is burned down. Fortunately, Gabriel is able to escape the flames, and he saves his younger brother from the burning house as well.
The story then jumps twenty-nine years into the future. The reader learns about forty-year-old Gabriel’s life in the present and what has unfolded in the years since that childhood discovery. After their parents were murdered, Gabriel and his brother were put in foster care. Gabriel went through numerous foster homes and began to grow into a young man who would regularly lash out in rage. Throughout this time, Gabriel and his brother were estranged. As a young adult, Gabriel was put in a psychiatric hospital. He received numerous types of treatments, including electric shock therapy. As a result of the electric therapy and Gabriel’s own suppression of the murder of his parents, he has few memories from the day. He has buried the memory so deeply that, despite years of therapy, he is not entirely sure what unfolded on that day. He knows that he saved David from the fire, and he is aware that he has a mysterious fear of cellars.
Following years of therapy and his time in the psychiatric ward, Gabriel has been able to live his life mostly functionally with this hidden trauma. He works for Python, a security company in Berlin. Python is run by Yuri Sarkov. Gabriel trusts and relies on Yuri, as he was the one who saved Gabriel from the psychiatric hospital and became his legal guardian. Gabriel has mixed feelings about his job, but he is grateful that it forces him to focus in the present, rather than backpedaling into the trauma of his past. Gabriel lives a mostly solitary life, save for the time he spends with his pregnant girlfriend, Liz, a television journalist.
One night Gabriel is called to attend a break-in at a mansion. When he arrives, he discovers an abandoned old house with an empty safe and an eery couture dress hanging in the basement, with a bizarre note attached to it. Gabriel is disturbed and finishes the job as quickly as he can so that he can leave. Just as he is about to leave the mansion, he receives a phone call from Liz. She has been beaten up and left in a park. Gabriel calls the police and rushes to the scene. However, when he arrives, Liz is nowhere to be found. Instead, the body of a young man is found in the park, and the police believe Gabriel is the murderer.
Gabriel is horrified. No one believes that Liz is Gabriel’s girlfriend, and then a stranger contacts him, claiming to have kidnapped her. Additionally, the stranger says that he was the one who murdered Gabriel’s parents and that he intends to kill Liz by the same means. If Gabriel has any hope of saving his girlfriend, he must find a way to remember what happened that night.
A critic in Publishers Weekly thought the book’s conclusion was “overlong” and “graphic.” However, Ewa Sherman, writing in Crime Review, stated that she was “impressed by the surprising plot, full of twists; a strong female who simply refuses to the next victim; and the interesting aspects of dealing with the painful memories and how they are being repressed.” At the AU Review website, Lyn Harder called Cut “well written” and recommended it to fans of “Stieg Larsson, Val McDermid, Karin Slaughter or James Patterson.” A critic online at Postcard Reviews found the novel a “stylish . . . thriller.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Publishers Weekly, February 27, 2017, review of Cut, p. 80.
ONLINE
AU Review, http://arts.theaureview.com (November 17, 2016), Lyn Harder, review of Cut.
Crime Review, http://crimereview.co.uk (March 4, 2017), Ewa Sherman, review of Cut.
Haphazardous Hippo, http://thehaphazardoushippo.blogspot.com (March 25, 2016), review of Cut.
Nigeladamsbookworm, https://nigeladamsbookworm.wordpress.com (August 21, 2017), Nigel Adams, review of The Shock.
Postcard Reviews, https://tracyshephard.wordpress.com (August 19, 2016), Tracy Shephard, review of Cut.*
Marc Raabe owns and runs a television production company. He lives with his family in Cologne.
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biography
When someone asks me about my job, I always have to think about it first. There are several. Although I did not learn any of them in the true sense.
I have always pounced on the things that fascinated me most - and that runs like a thread through my life.
Born I was in 1968 in Cologne, I grew up in Erftstadt, a small town near Cologne.
Even as a little boy , I loved stories, especially the exciting ones. At night I secretly read under the covers, on the left the gummy bears, in the middle the book and on the right the flashlight. When the battery gave up, I stared at the sloping roof above me and thought up stories myself.
At the age of 15, a friend spoke to me about whether I would like to participate in his film project. I wanted to.
We felt like Steven Spielberg and Georg Lucas together. We spent the rest of our school days in the basement, with improvised movie headlights, Super-8 cameras, cutting tools and sprawling ideas. The school was there to discuss which scene we wanted to shoot in the afternoon. Exams were secondary. The tests that really counted were the film competitions in which we submitted our films.
After high school I applied in Munich at the film school.
I got into the round of the last 30 invited to audition in Munich. One of the professors, with cowboy boots and crossed legs, asked me what contribution I wanted to make to German film. I said, "I'd like to make it a bit more French."
I was not taken.
The idea of writing a book came shortly afterwards. I was in Prague where I was doing an internship at a Czech film production. The monstrous and morbid charm of the city fascinated me so much that I hardly knew where to go with all these impressions.
I was in my early twenties, wanted to write 500 pages and came to page 70. Then the story flew around my ears. Too big, too demanding, too little experience.
German studies and theater, film and television science were my next stop. A mistake, as it turned out quickly. German studies was far too theoretical for me. It had nothing to do with how to tell stories. Instead, it was about classifying stories told by others under cultural and scientific aspects.
At the same time my school friend and I felt the need to get out of the local cellar with our film projects. We borrowed money, rented an office in Cologne and opened a production company.
I gave up the study with a light heart at the same moment.
For two decades now I have been working in this company as a cutter, graphic artist, implementer, editor and managing director, putting together the most diverse stories in dark rooms: magazine contributions, trailers, introductions, documentaries, image films, entertainment.
For me, it was always magical moments sitting in front of a glowing monitor in the dark, holding material in my fingers and making something out of it.
Then, at the age of 40 , now married to a psychologist, with two children, a dog, and a little more life experience, I thought: There's the book thing. I was afraid I would not forgive myself if I did not at least try it.
So I started. I did not read books in the evening, instead I tried to write one.
It was like sitting on the screen and cutting a film, just with words instead of pictures. It was like flying. And at the same time it was hard work. But if working hard feels like flying, I thought, then it must be right.
I spent more than two years learning to write.
Until I finally had this picture in mind, of a boy who stands at the threshold of a dark basement stairs and in the curiosity and fear wrestle with each other, whether he should go down.
Another year and a half later, "Schnitt" was finished.
Cut
264.9 (Feb. 27, 2017): p80.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Cut Marc Raabe. trans. from the German by Sharmila Cohen. Manilla (IPG, dist.), $12.95 trade paper (480p) ISBN 978-1-78658-007-8
Security guard Gabriel Naumann, the hero of German author Raabe's fast-paced debut, spent five years in a psychiatric clinic after witnessing and not being able to remember his parents' murder. One night nearly 30 years later, he responds to an alarm at a long-vacant Berlin house. Once inside the house, he receives a frantic call from Liz Anders, his journalist girlfriend, begging for help. Then the line goes dead. He rushes to the location she described only to find the corpse of a man whose throat has been slit. Authorities on the scene think Gabriel is the man's murderer. After escaping police custody, he reaches out to his brother, David, from whom he's been estranged for 20 years. Liz's kidnapper, after sending Gabriel an envelope containing her cell phone, calls Gabriel on the phone and threatens to harm Liz unless Gabriel can figure out how to locate them. In order to do so, Gabriel must remember what happened the night his parents were killed. Unfortunately, the action builds to an overlong and too graphic ending. (Apr.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Cut." Publishers Weekly, 27 Feb. 2017, p. 80. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA485671184&it=r&asid=dd750e0bb9becc44dd4cbf5e9b42cbb4. Accessed 30 Sept. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A485671184
Book Review: Cut by Marc Raabe is a page turner of a thriller for fans of Stieg Larsson and Val McDermid
November 17, 2016 / Lyn Harder
Cut, the new book from Marc Raabe, starts with Gabriel, an eleven year old boy, discovering a secretive and disturbing crime that happened in the family home, before both his parents are killed. Then the story moves forward 29 years later and we learn where Gabriel is now, what happened to his little brother and just how what happened that night has followed him, and why after so many years someone is pursuing him with messages telling that they know what Gabriel had seen and what he’d done that night.
The prologue sucked me in and I poured into the book wanting to know what happened that night, as you will too. Each chapter unfolds like a layer of pringle chips. The chapters are quick and the answers get closer and closer. The novel is perfect for book enthusiasts who can’t put a book down at the end of each chapter. It wasn’t long before I was half way through, taken on a journey that felt dark and overcast where not much joy was divulged.
After trying to deal with his sordid past, Gabriel’s girlfriend, Liz, is kidnapped by a serial killer. Gabriel has no idea why, but that it has to do with his past. So he must dig into his past and reconnect with his brother to help find the answers. But how can he find answers when the past has been archived so deep into the recesses of his brain? Years of therapy couldn’t bring the answers out so how will he find them before it’s too late to save Liz?
The main character, Gabriel, is like a Bond character, or a Transporter action hero. He’s also a man who argues with the voice in his head, called Luke. But he’s a man who in the end triumphs against the evil he witnessed and who ultimately pulled it together to find the answers.
Well written, Cut was a huge best seller in Europe back in 2012 and has now been translated into English for our enjoyment. Marc Raabe owns and runs a television production company and Cut is his first thriller novel.
I have to say I’m not a fan of the scenes in which animals being killed (there are two scenes in the book), personally I find it unnecessary and disturbing in any format. But there aren’t too many gory scenes and the book does end briefly. In saying this, I do recommend the book and if you’re a fan of Stieg Larsson, Val McDermid, Karin Slaughter or James Patterson, you’ll be taken along on an thriller that is too ghastly to contemplate.
Cut is available now through Allen & Unwin
Publisher
Manilla
Date Published
28 July 2016
ISBN-10
1786580071
ISBN-13
978-1786580078
Format
paperback
Pages
496
Price
£ 7.99
Cut
by Marc Raabe
Gabriel’s pregnant girlfriend is abducted. To find her and the serial killer he is forced to face the horrific past he’s been running away from for nearly three decades.
Review
An 11-year-old boy witnessed a horrendous crime which has damaged his life beyond belief. His parents were murdered, his house burnt to the ground. Several foster homes and many rages later his devastated younger brother David eventually became estranged, and Gabriel Naumann spent years locked in a psychiatric hospital, undergoing various therapies, including electric shocks. He remembers very little, other than saving David from the burning house. Yet fear of cellars, memory of a watching some film and the childhood obsession with Luke, the Star Wars hero, remained.
Nearly three decades later Gabriel is mostly alone and works for the security company Python in Berlin, run by an enigmatic Russian called Yuri Sarkov. He equally loves and hates his job but at least he can concentrate on the present, rather than the horrifying past, and can always rely on his boss who had become his legal guardian after rescuing him from the psychiatric hospital.
During a late night shift an alarm is activated following a break-in at old mansion in a posh suburb. Yuri specifically asks his colleague Cogan to go and do the checks but Gabriel goes instead. When he arrives he’s shocked to discover that the building has been abandoned for years, yet the alarm keeps going off. At the property he finds that the living-room safe has been opened and emptied. But what really terrifies him is a brand new couture dress, with an attached note, hanging in the basement.
The bizarre sight triggers painful feelings and as he’s just about to finish the job, he receives a call from his pregnant girlfriend Liz Anders, a TV journalist. She has been badly beaten in a park. Gabriel alerts the police but when he arrives at the scene Liz is gone, and he’s being accused of murdering a young man lying there in her place.
The detectives get hold of confidential treatment files, the old psychiatrist mocks Gabriel, his depressed brother is on the verge of losing his TV career and not interested in helping, and no one believes that Liz is his girlfriend. Without any clues as to the disappearance and no help from the authorities, Gabriel is thrown into the frantic race against time when a stranger contacts him. The ghost from the past wants him to remember what had happened at that fateful night as he plans to kill Liz. Very elaborately. And to destroy Gabriel’s life completely.
The chilling and disturbing Cut was a bestseller in Germany. The English translation by Sharmila Cohen carries the mood perfectly. Although chasing the serial killer is not a new subject, here the terrifying character, calculating, methodical, and extremely cruel, is really not for the faint-hearted – and simply unforgettable. Also, other characters are well portrayed, and what’s important, believable. Although I cannot stomach the graphic descriptions of torture, I am impressed by the surprising plot, full of twists; a strong female who simply refuses to the next victim; and the interesting aspects of dealing with the painful memories and how they are being repressed.
Reviewed 04 March 2017 by Ewa Sherman
August 19, 2016
Cut Marc Raabe
Pub: Manilla
At eleven years old, Gabriel Naumann is witness to a horrific crime.
29 years later his girlfriend is taken.
Then the messages begin.
Somebody knows about his past.
Somebody knows what he did.
And now his girlfriend will pay for it – unless he can find her in time . . .
When you’ve spent decades running from your past, what do you do when it finally catches up?
‘If you want to find her, then you’ll have to find me’
Cut is a stylish and rather ‘grown up’ thriller.
Gabriel is scared of cellars.
When is his girlfriend rings him saying she has been attacked and is hurt, he races to her aid. However, on reaching the park where she says she is, he finds a dead man and a lot of Police. He becomes suspect No 1. and Liz is nowhere to be found.
This novel is quite difficult to get into, I did find I was lost in places and I had to take notes while I was reading. But it is a good read and one that has an interesting plot.
Gabriel has spent quite a few years in a mental institution, and if I hadn’t wanted to know the reasons why, I probably would have given up with this one.
It is a novel that ‘feeds’ the mind and ends rather good. It is brutal in parts and although not for every reader, I did find it enjoyable. I wasn’t able to read in one sitting, which is how I usually read, but over the course of the few days it took, it was time well spent.
I think Cut will get mixed reviews depending on the reader, but for me it entertained and I am happy to recommend.
3*/5
Friday, 25 March 2016
Cut: The serial killer that took Europe by storm - Marc Raabe
As soon as I read the synopsis for Cut I knew it was a book I wanted to read, the reality however was slightly disappointing.
Gabriel spent twenty years of his life in an institution after the death of both of his parents, but now he's out, working as a security guard and trying to move on with his life. When the alarm is triggered at a derelict house and he receives a frantic call from his pregnant girlfirend Liz, his life is once again turned upside down and he's forced to revisit the past horrors of his childhood.
Someone from Gabriel's past has kidnapped Liz, he's out for revenge and nothing is going to stop him.
I found the authors writing style quite difficult to connect with but I don't know if it's the writing or the translation itself. The story was unbelievable in places (one example is people being shot several times but still able to get around and no mention of going to hospital or receiving any kind of treatment) and there were far too many coincidences for my liking. On a more positive note though Marc Raabe knows how to build tension as in the last quarter of the book the pace was severely ramped up as it raced to it's conclusion.
Overall I thought this was an average thriller and not one that I think can genuinely be called a psychological thriller.
With kind thanks to Bonnier publishing and NetGalley for the review copy.
The Shock Marc Raabe
Set mainly in Berlin this psychological thriller is a typical example of the past catching up with the future, intertwined with hidden family secrets having horrific consequences.
The story starts with Jan Floss spending a few days away with his sister Katy; his long lost school crush Laura; and the handsome Greg.
When Laura goes missing after an argument Jan finds her mobile phone with a disturbing video on it.
For some reason Raabe determines that his main protagonist, Jan, will not involve the Police, but will attempt to find Laura himself.
It is evident that Laura has been kidnapped by a serial killer and as the bodies start to pile up, and attempts are made on Jan’s life, he still does not involve the police.
That is the problem with this book it is not very realistic. At every point in the story the characters make decisions which no sane person would make.
The end of the story is very good with plenty of twists and shocks; but it feels as though this was where the story started for the author, and that the first 75% of the book was just a vehicle to get to the end scenario.
Pages: 384
Published by: Manila
Publish date: 24th August 2017.
Available to pre-order on Amazon