Volker Kutscher


Volker Kutscher is a German novelist, best known for his Berlin-based Gereon Rath crime series, which serves as the basis for Sky thriller series Babylon Berlin.

Biography

Volker Kutscher was born on December 26, 1962 in Lindlar, North Rhine-Westphalia outside of Cologne, Germany. At university, Kutscher studied German, philosophy and history, and later worked as a newspaper editor prior to beginning his career as a novelist.
In 1996, he published his first crime novel Bullenmord, set in his native region Bergisches Land. He followed this with two other standalone books, published in 1998 and 2003, respectively.
Volker Kutscher works as a full-time author and lives in Cologne.

''Gereon Rath'' series

Inspired by his historical knowledge as well as The Sopranos, the 2002 gangster film Road to Perdition, and Fritz Lang's 1931 Berlin-based film M, Kutscher began working on the Gereon Rath series in the early 2000s. Set in the Weimar Republic, the series are meticulously researched and confronts fictional as well as non-fictional characters. Of note, Kutscher's works are the first German crime novels set in the "golden" 1920s. The series was an instant hit in Germany and was awarded the Berlin Krimi-Fuchs Crime Writers Prize in 2011 and has sold over one million copies worldwide.
His award-winning Gereon Rath series, published by Kiepenbauer & Witsch, consists of Der nasse Fisch, Der stumme Tod, Goldstein, Die Akte Vaterland, and Märzgefallene, all using Berlin during 1929-1931 as a scenic backdrop. Kutscher's sixth novel, Lunapark, was released in November 2016 and is set in the summer of 1934. Kutscher published Moabit and Marlow in 2017 and 2018 and plans to release another entry in the series.

Television adaption

In the mid-2010s, a writer-director team of Tom Tykwer, Achim von Borries and Hendrik Handloegten used Kutscher's novels as the basis for the show Babylon Berlin. The series premiered on October 13, 2017 on Sky 1, a German-language entertainment channel broadcast by Sky Deutschland. Netflix released the first two seasons in the US, Canada, and Australia.
The show has received many accolades and has brought Kutscher's books to an international audience. The show has received many awards including a Bambi in the category Beste Serie des Jahres , four awards at the Deutscher Fernsehpreis, a Grimme-Preis, a Goldene Kamera for lead actor Volker Bruch. In December 2019, the European Film Academy awarded the series with the inaugural Achievement in Fiction Series Award at the European Film Awards.

Novels

Gereon Rath series:
  1. Der nasse Fisch, Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2008,.
  2. : English translation: Babylon Berlin, Picador, London 2018,, translated by Niall Sellar
  3. * "Moabit", short story, prequel, Galiani, Berlin/Cologne 2017,.
  4. Der stumme Tod, Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2009,.
  5. : English translation: The Silent Death, Picador, London 2018,, translated by Niall Sellar
  6. Goldstein, Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2010,.
  7. : English translation: Goldstein, Picador, London 2019,, translated by Niall Sellar
  8. Die Akte Vaterland, Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2012,.
  9. : English translation: The Fatherland Files, Sandstone, Highland 2019,, translated by Niall Sellar
  10. Märzgefallene, Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2014,.
  11. * "Märchen mit Zündhölzern", 2016, short story
  12. * "Durchmarsch", 2016, short story
  13. Lunapark, Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2016,.
  14. * "Plan B", 2017, short story
  15. Marlow, Piper, Munich 2018,.
Standalone: