Cassie McCullagh

Now, this is his first novel, and it's set in and around Berlin, close to the Polish border.

It's winter.

It's snowing and a single wolf has appeared next to a traffic jam on a freeway.

And while the wolf's the connecting figure in the novel, it's the story of a whole series of characters whose footsteps sort of cross the wolf's faint tracks.

Eventually they come together or come sort of closer to each other.

But it has a very particular style and maybe the best way to imagine that style is to have a listen to a reading.

the opening page of the novel, read for us by Joel and Camilleri.

Helen Groth, what do you make of that first meeting with the wolf?

That's so clever because when you describe that, I thought, oh, this is a great metaphor for the ancient and the wild in contrast to the modern and the brutal.

And that is then consciously taken on as the picture seems to go viral or whatever you'd say, where everybody can realise what's the message or whatever the messages are of the image.

Yeah.

So it's interesting to see the versions of Germany that you get.

And it feels like it's very much in the shadow of East Germany.

as well, and the old sort of East Berlin.

You know, there are decrepit tenements, things are changing.

But all of those minor characters, that worked for me.

I mean, did it work for you not having a central character or not?

It's called One Clear Ice Cold January Morning and it is clear and cold and crisp and sharp.

It's a very well-controlled novel, it seemed to me.

I mean, this is his first novel, but he's written many plays and he's been very successful in his playwriting.