TV journalist Hannah Steiner is about to reach the peak of her career: she was chosen to take over a political talk show and to host a live show in front of the Brandenburg Gate on October 3rd for ARD/ZDF. But at that same moment, she discovers that she was adopted 30 years ago, the sole survivor of a family tragedy on the Night of German Unity. Her biological father was a Stasi major with Schalck-Golodkowski. In front of running cameras Hannah has to make a decision between her career … and revenge.

Even 30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the history and stories of the divided republic still influence German society and the biographies of millions of people. In his novel "Oktobernacht" („October night“), the Franconian crime writer Volker Backert traces the historical caesura of the German division. Furthermore, the life of his protagonist Hannah Steiner reflects the political ups and downs of the divided country, as her life is drawn into the maelstrom of the German-German past. How many painful truths does it take to establish state unity, to find personal identity? The story seems superficially like a classic crime novel with a traditional investigation: a cold case from the transitional days comes to the surface and the lives of two people are shaken by it. But there is a deeper meaning here. Between the lines, readers can also witness the very personal account of an author and contemporary „surviver“, who spent his childhood and youth in the East, not far from the death strip. Years later, in the post-reunification period, he tried to create order in the Franconian administration where order could not be found. The many encounters and fates that did not abandon him to this day have been impressively incorporated into his crime novel that could not be more current and exciting.