Green Wave
Published by Diogenes as Grüne Welle
Original Title: Grüne Welle

After going to the cinema with her best friend, a woman gets into her car and drives home – until a diversion takes her off her usual route. She misses exit after exit, straying further and further from home, where her husband is waiting for her. Within a night and a day it becomes clear: perhaps it would be better if she never went back to him. Because as unsettling as the darkness of the highways and gas stations may be, the true danger is waiting for her at home.

Contemporary Literature, Novel
208 pages
2026

978-3-257-07381-2
Esther
Schüttpelz

 Esther Schüttpelz, born in Werne in 1993, studied law in Münster and worked as a lawyer before becoming an author. For her novel Without Me, she received the ›lit.Cologne Debut Prize‹ in 2023. She lives near Münster.

Photo: Julia Sellmann / © Diogenes Verlag

Pressezitate

Silvi Feist
Emotion, Hamburg

»This is a book to open wide awake and to read in one session.«

Uwe Sauerwein
Berliner Morgenpost

»It's a compelling narrative perspective that Esther Schüttpelz employs to involve us in the inner monologue of this woman, virtually facilitated by the route diversions.«

Susanne Zobel
News, Vienna

»In a subtle way, Esther Schüttpelz inweaves hideous topics of our time, such as domestic violence.«

Frankfurter Rundschau

»An intense yet down-to-earth book […]. The author has a good sense of pace which gets increased at times and decreased at others.«

Tilman Spreckelsen
Frankfurter Allgemeine

»The insight that you cannot carry on the way you used to, has rarely been approached and narrated with such grotesque humour, despite the seriousness.«

Eva Menasse
(Author of Darkenbloom)

»Green Wave is a captivating feat: a protagonist who has always lied to herself nevertheless tells us the whole truth.«

Cornelia Geißler
Berliner Zeitung

»The book is incredibly timely.«

Markus Steinmayr
Der Freitag, Berlin

»With ease, Schüttpelz manages to shape the material she presents into a form that corresponds to her narrative. This is rare in contemporary literature.«