The Druid Gate

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The Druidentor is a fantastic novel by Wolfgang Hohlbein , which was first published in 1993 and is one of the author's most successful books.

action

In order to counteract the constant traffic jams and slow-moving traffic on the routes to Italy , Switzerland is building a railway tunnel through the Gridone massif above the tourist town of Ascona . But strange things already happen while the line is being built; the time within the massif sometimes seems to stop or run backwards. A mysterious hermit who watches the construction workers urgently warns of the impending dangers.

The unimaginable happened three years later, after the opening of the railway line: A high-tech ICE from Deutsche Bahn, which cost several million marks, got stuck in the tunnel. The rescuers find a picture that is as impossible as it is frightening: instead of the new railcar, a rusted, scrap-ripe vehicle stands on the tracks, all passengers are apparently starved or thirsty, mummified after their death . Centuries must have passed inside the tunnel while minutes passed in the outside world. Local officials speak of a terrorist attack to hide their own perplexity, and international military are cordoning off the area.

Frank Warstein, the surveyor for the construction project that the site manager Franke had driven into ruin, is not very pleased when the wife of a former colleague asks him to help her find her husband, who has gone back to the mountain. Frank is initially suspicious, but then his curiosity wins out; he finally wants to know the truth about the mysterious tunnel.

background

The background to the story is initially the visionary abilities of the hermit, who is reminiscent of a druid . Time dilation also plays a role, an effect described by the theory of relativity . What is decisive, however, is the function of the mountain through which the tunnel leads, as a kind of holy or consecrated place, where the laws of nature that are familiar to us can be repealed.

distribution

With around two million copies sold, Das Druidentor Hohlbein is the most successful thriller . ( Märchenmond sold even better, but is counted among the books for children and young people.)

expenditure

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