Guarding Hanna

Abandoned at birth because he has the face of a "prize boar," the unnamed narrator of Guarding Hanna knows only a local Berlin gang as family. Patriarch Maestro acts as surrogate father, employing him to collect debts and perform thuggish tasks. Except for brief moments interacting with the gang, "the beast" spends his life alone, wandering Berlin's streets and sleeping in its vast housing projects. This changes in a flash when one of Maestro's sons is implicated in a crime. The only hope of saving him is to protect the sole witness, beautiful but eccentric Hanna Wyoczik. Maestro calls on "the beast" to move in with her until the trial. But never having spent more than five minutes in a social situation with any human being, much less a woman, he quickly finds the basic tasks of human interaction and social intercourse insufferable. Yet Hanna's unfazed reaction to her guardian, and her witty account of philandering ex-husbands and a nympho mother, soon confound and captivate him. Could love be rearing its head? Miha Mazzini weaves simple scenes into a meaningful and darkly hilarious novel, relentlessly poking and prodding at the human condition without losing sight of the characters' humanity.


Genre: Mystery