Delirium (book)
Delirium (also known as Amor-Deliria-Nervosa) is the first volume in the Amor trilogy by the American author Lauren Oliver . In Germany, the youth novel was published in 2011 by Carlsen-Verlag .
Social situation
The book takes place in the near future when the President of the United States characterized love as a deadly disease. However, a procedure has been developed that can cure deliria from the age of 18. To do this, you first have to register for an examination in which you are assessed by experts in order to find a suitable partner after the healing. Every healed person has a triangular scar on the neck to be recognized and from this point onwards can neither feel love nor beauty, one is, so to speak, emotionless. After the procedure, everyone who has been healed is sent a selection of potential partners, from whom one is then selected. Similar to Suzanne Collins ' The Hunger Games , the country is divided into fixed, secure areas that are monitored with an electronic border. Outside of these safe areas there are also free areas where only unhealed and sympathizers live according to their own rules. Sometimes people are also healed unsuccessfully and can still feel love after the procedure. These species are called sympathizers and, as a rule, they are always punished if they can be identified. To prevent deliria in youth, boys and girls are kept separate in all activities.
action
Magdalena Ella Haloway, called Lena, is a 17-year-old girl who grew up with her aunt in Portland , Maine after the death of her mother Annabel (a sympathizer) and the early cancer death of her father shortly after her birth . She has an older sister Rachel, who is already married, and two grand cousins (the daughters of her deceased cousin) who, like Lena, grow up in the house of their aunt and grandmother. Her best friend is Hana, who is of the same age, with whom she has been friends since school and with whom she often pursues their shared hobby, long-distance running .
Lena can't wait to be cured after her mother allegedly committed suicide as a result of the disease. Because of this, she is often tormented by dreams that she would like to get rid of through healing. By chance she meets the apparently healed Alex, for whom she soon feels more than friendship. However, Lena knows that the feelings for him are wrong and that she is about to become infected with deliria. However, she thinks that the contact with Alex cannot be harmful, since he is cured, for this reason the contact between the two is not a criminal offense. At their first, not accidental, meeting on the beach at Back Cove, Alex confesses that his scar was intentionally applied, that it came from the wild and that it was not "cured". Despite Lena's initial fear of this revelation, she continues to get involved with him at another chance meeting. Fearing that she might get caught, like her sister before her, Alex and Lena soon meet in secret in an old, abandoned property that was built in the style of the colonial era and no one pays any attention to being together. Alex tells Lena that he knows the truth about her family. The two decide to flee across the border at night and start a new life together in the free areas outside of Portland.
They begin to accumulate supplies to survive in the wild until they finally set out to escape. When they have almost reached the border, the officers of the border patrol, who have been following the refugees since Lena's house, catch up with them and shoot them, whereupon Alex is hit. The book ends with the instruction to Lena to run away.
Awards
- Buxtehuder Bull 2012