Sebastian Fitzek

Sebastian Fitzek at the Frankfurt Book Fair (2017)

Signature of Sebastian Fitzek (October 2019)

Sebastian David Fitzek (born October 13, 1971 in Berlin ) is a German writer and journalist .

Life

Fitzek was born in Berlin in 1971. His father was the director of the Lilienthal-Gymnasium in Berlin-Lichterfelde , his mother a German teacher. In his youth he wanted to be a drummer. After graduating from the Charlottenburg Forest High School , he began studying veterinary medicine, but broke it off after three months. He studied law up to the first state examination , did his doctorate in copyright law and then worked as editor-in-chief and program director for various radio stations in Germany. For several years he worked in the programming department of the Berlin radio station 104.6 RTL . Fitzek co-wrote the non-fiction book Professor Udolph's Book of Names, which was published by Bertelsmann in 2005, together with the name researcher Jürgen Udolph . The Spiegel bestseller was the template for the television format Germany - your names, in whose development Fitzek was involved. The program was broadcast in March 2006 by ZDF under the moderation of Johannes B. Kerners .

Fitzek has been writing psychological thrillers since 2006, all of which have become bestsellers. His first work The Therapy goes back to an idea he had in 2000 in an orthopedic surgeon's waiting room while he was waiting for his girlfriend. It was published by Droemer Knaur Verlag in July 2006 after thirteen rejections by publishers and three rewritings, as were the subsequent ones. The Odeon Film AG bought the film rights to the book. In 2007, The Therapy was nominated for the Friedrich Glauser Prize as the best crime debut . His next thriller Amokspiel was released in April 2007, for which Goldkind Film AG bought the film rights. In 2012, the first film adaptation of one of his novels was made with Das Kind .

Tour bus of the writer Fitzek on the reading tour for his novel The Gift (December 2019)

Fitzek often went unusual ways in his author readings . He was invited by his readers and read among other things in a student flat share , in the mourning hall of a funeral home , in a hospice in Wolfsburg and in a dental practice. He was the first author to rent his own stand at the Leipzig Book Fair in 2013. In 2014, he offered author readings of the novel Noah with musical accompaniment by the Berlin band Buffer Underrun . Fitzek's works have so far been translated into 24 languages. He is one of the few German thriller authors to be published in Great Britain and the USA.

In September 2013, the Berlin premiere of a theater adaptation of The Soul Breaker took place at the Berlin Criminal Theater .

In October 2015 Fitzek published two novels in parallel:

• The novel The Joshua Profile is about an unsuccessful writer named Max Rhode who has only one successful work, namely The Blood School .
• While writing, Fitzek discovered his interest in this fictional work and wrote Die Blutschule himself under the pseudonym Max Rhode. He emphasized that you do n't need to read Die Blutschule to understand The Joshua Profile .

Fitzek lives in Berlin, has been married since 2010 and has three children. In August 2019, Fitzek announced the separation from his wife on his Facebook page.

Since the premature birth of his second son in 2013, he has been volunteering as the patron of the premature child association. In an interview, he stated that this topic was of particular concern to him because it was the largest group of child patients and only very few parents thought about what steps to take in the event of a premature birth.

On October 29, 2016, Fitzek presented the book “Das Paket” with background music from Buffer Underrun for the finale of the Eifel Literature Festival 2016 in the town hall in Bitburg. In March 2017, Fitzek's first children's book Pupsi & Stinki was published as a read-aloud book with drawings by the illustrator Jörn “Stolli” Stollmann, and only two weeks later the Purge- inspired thriller AchtNacht. The latter was published on a Tuesday, rose to number 6 on the SPIEGEL bestseller list that same week , but then managed to climb to number 1, which it held for at least another week (as of March 29, 2017).

In 2017, AchtNacht was the best-selling novel in Germany. In 2018, Sebastian Fitzek made it to the top with the paperback edition of Das Paket and came third with Der Inasse .

At the end of February 2018 it was announced that Fitzek had donated the Viktor Crime Award , endowed with € 6,666 , which will be given every two years from 2018 to "a new voice in thriller and crime literature". The first winner is the Viennese author Michaela Kastel with So dark the forest .

Influences

According to his own account, Fitzek was shaped in his childhood by Enid Blyton , Michael Ende and Alfred Weidenmann and later by Stephen King , Michael Crichton and John Grisham . Today Sebastian Fitzek reads everything from Harlan Coben .

criticism

The reviews of Sebastian Fitzek range from "Thriller-König" to Verrissen. In 2013 the Neue Zürcher Zeitung wrote about Der Nachtwandler: “What is fiction in the thriller Der Nachtwandler by German author Sebastian Fitzek is reality in many people's lives. And only those who recognize the waking dream as such learn to escape from it. Fitzek knows these dreams too, which is what inspired him to write this detective novel. In doing so, the author not only broke the frame of reality, but also pushed the boundaries of imagination.

In his review of the pedophile crime thriller Das Joshua-Profil (2015), Denis Scheck judged that Fitzek was a “talentless, clichéd and - if you may - stupid author” who marked “the zero line of contemporary German literature”.

Denis Scheck said of Fitzek's 2018 novel The Inmate : "This is not a novel, this is a sewer".

The Spiegel titled Sebastian Fitzek as one of the “most professional and technically reliable thriller authors in Germany” and presented Passenger 23 as the crime thriller of the month in2014: “[Fitzek] is developing […] a very densely written, very violent thriller that is written by the first to last page works. No scene is too much. "

Denis Scheck described the psychological thriller The Gift , published in 2019, in “Fresh off the press” as “lousy violent porn”.

Awards

• 2010 LovelyBooks readers' award in the suspense category (crime fiction, thriller) for Der Augensammler
• 2011 LovelyBooks reader award in the suspense category (crime novel, thriller) for Der Augenjäger
• 2012 LovelyBooks reader award in the suspense category (crime novel, thriller) for cut off
• 2014 LovelyBooks Readers Award in the Crime & Thriller category for Passenger 23
• 2015 LovelyBooks Readers Award in the Crime & Thriller category for The Joshua Profile
• 2016/2017 European Prize for Crime Fiction
• 2016 LovelyBooks reader award in the categories Crime & Thriller, Best Audio Book and Best Book Cover for Das Paket
• 2017 LovelyBooks Readers Award in the categories Crime & Thriller and Best Audiobook for fear of flying 7A
• 2018 LovelyBooks Readers Award in the Crime & Thriller category for Der Inasse
• 2019 LovelyBooks Readers Award in the Crime & Thriller category for The Gift

Works

Psychological thriller

• The therapy . Knaur Taschenbuchverlag, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-426-63309-4 .
• Amok game . Knaur Taschenbuchverlag, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-426-63718-0 .
• The child. Droemer, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-426-19782-0 .
• The soul breaker . Knaur Taschenbuchverlag, Munich 2008, ISBN 3-426-63792-8 .
• Splinter. Droemer, Munich 2009, ISBN 3-426-19847-9 .
• The eye collector. Droemer, Munich 2010, ISBN 3-426-19851-7 .
• PS I kill you (as the editor). Droemer, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-426-19897-1 .
• The eye hunter. Droemer, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-426-19881-0 .
• Do not fall asleep. Short story, e-book from neobooks.com, November 2011.
• Cut off (with Michael Tsokos ). Droemer, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-426-19926-8 .
• The nightwalker. Knaur Taschenbuchverlag, Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-426-50374-4 .
• Noah . Bastei Lübbe, Cologne 2013, ISBN 978-3-7857-2482-8 .
• Passenger 23 . Droemer, Munich 2014, ISBN 978-3-426-19919-0 . ( 1st place on the Spiegel bestseller list from November 17, 2014 to January 23, 2015 )
• The Joshua profile . Bastei Lübbe, Cologne 2015, ISBN 978-3-7857-2545-0 . ( No. 1 on the Spiegel bestseller list from November 7th to 13th, 2015 )
• The package . Droemer, Munich 2016, ISBN 978-3-426-19920-6 ( 1st place in the Spiegel bestseller list from November 5 to 11, 2016 and from January 7 to 20, 2017 ).
• Eight night . Knaur Taschenbuchverlag, Munich 2017, ISBN 978-3-426-52108-3 .
• Fear of flying 7A. Droemer, Munich 2017, ISBN 978-3-426-19921-3 .
• The inmate. Droemer, Munich 2018, ISBN 978-3-426-28153-6 .
• The present . Droemer, Munich 2019, ISBN 978-3-426-28154-3 .

under the pseudonym Max Rhode

• The blood school . Bastei Lübbe, Bergisch Gladbach 2015, ISBN 978-3-404-17267-2 .

Non-fiction

• The unknown type of use. Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag, Berlin 2000, ISBN 978-3-8305-0096-4 . (Dissertation).
• The 10 greatest radio secrets (with Rüdiger Kreklau ). Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-8311-1219-3 .
• Professor Udolph's Book of Names: Where They Come From - What They Mean (with Jürgen Udolph ). Bertelsmann, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-442-15428-6 .

Children's books

• Pupsi and stinky . Pattloch, Munich 2017, ISBN 978-3-629-14237-5 (with drawings by Jörn Stollmann).

Other books

• Fish climbing trees. A compass for the great adventure called life. Droemer, Munich 2019, ISBN 978-3-426-27782-9 .

Audiobooks (excerpt)

• 2007: The therapy, Audio Lübbe, 288 min., Read by Simon Jäger , ISBN 978-3-7857-3378-3 (DE: Gold in the audio book award ).
• 2007: Amokspiel, Audio Lübbe, 315 min., Read by Simon Jäger, ISBN 978-3-7857-3379-0 .
• 2007: Das Kind, Audio Lübbe, 289 min., Read by Simon Jäger, ISBN 978-3-7857-3521-3 .
• 2008: Der Seelenbrecher, Audio Lübbe, 250 min., Read by Simon Jäger, ISBN 978-3-7857-3700-2 .
• 2009: Splitter, Audio Lübbe, 265 min., Read by Simon Jäger, ISBN 978-3-7857-4209-9 .
• 2009: Weißer Schnee, Rotes Blut, audio book Hamburg, 132 min., Read by Sebastian Bezzel , Brigitte Hobmeier , Burghart Klaußner , Hans Löw and Ulrich Pleitgen , ISBN 978-3-89903-675-6 .
• 2010: Der Augensammler, Audio Lübbe, 310 min., Read by Simon Jäger, ISBN 978-3-7857-4368-3 .
• 2011: PS I kill you, Audio Lübbe, 268 min., Read by Simon Jäger and David Nathan , ISBN 978-3-7857-4561-8 .
• 2011: Der Augenjäger, Audio Lübbe, 284 min., Read by Simon Jäger, ISBN 978-3-7857-4561-8 .
• 2012: Truncated, Audio Lübbe, 427 min., Read by Simon Jäger and David Nathan, ISBN 978-3-7857-4749-0 .
• 2013: Der Nachtwandler, Audio Lübbe, 297 min., Read by Simon Jäger, ISBN 978-3-7857-4839-8 .
• 2013: Noah, Audio Lübbe, abridged, 6 CDs 432 min., Read by Simon Jäger, ISBN 978-3-7857-4784-1 .
• 2014: Passenger 23, Audio Lübbe, 299 min., Read by Simon Jäger, ISBN 978-3-7857-5047-6 , (DE: Gold in Audiobook Award).
• 2015: The Joshua Profile, Audio Lübbe, 413 min., Read by Simon Jäger, ISBN 978-3-7857-5142-8 .
• 2016: Das Paket, Audio Lübbe, 411 min., Read by Simon Jäger, ISBN 978-3-7857-5389-7 (DE: Gold in Audiobook Award)
• 2017: AchtNacht, Audio Lübbe, 398 min., Read by Simon Jäger, ISBN 978-3-7857-5528-0 .
• 2017: Flugangst 7a, Audio Lübbe, 424 min., Read by Simon Jäger, ISBN 3-8398-1586-X (DE: Gold in the audio book award).
• 2018: The inmate, Argon audio book, 420 min., Read by Simon Jäger, ISBN 978-3-8398-1636-3 .
• 2019: The Gift, Argon audio book, 445 min., Read by Simon Jäger, ISBN 978-3-8398-1637-0 .

Film adaptations

• 2012: The child
• 2018: The Joshua Profile
• 2018: cut off
• 2018: Amokspiel (TV movie)
• 2018: Passenger 23 - Disappeared on the High Seas (TV movie)

Dramatizations

• 2011: The Soulbreaker. Distribution agency and publishing house for German stage writers and stage composers
• 2016: The Therapy. Distributor and publisher
• 2016: Passenger 23rd sales point and publisher
• 2019: The package. Distributor and publisher

Board and card games

• 2017: Sebastian Fitzek SafeHouse, a board game by Marco Teubner
• 2018: Black Stories. 50 pitch-black puzzles in the Sebastian Fitzek Edition, a thriller card game with illustrations by Bernhard Skopnik
• 2019: Sebastian Fitzek SafeHouse - The dice game, a board game by Marco Teubner

Interactive novel

In January 2011, Fitzek started the “Interactive Novel with Sebastian Fitzek” campaign in collaboration with the bookstore concept zeilenreich from Direct Group Bertelsmann . Fans had the opportunity via Facebook for five weeks to work with the author on the plot of the novel Das Profil , the title and beginning of which Fitzek had specified. In May, the story was published as a free e-book .

We write at home

At the beginning of April 2020, Fitzek came up with the idea of ​​publishing a collection of short stories, the proceeds of which would benefit the bookstores that were struggling with COVID-19 . Fans on Instagram had the opportunity to write their own stories and submit them via a website. Rough framework actions and conditions for the stories were determined in joint coordination.

On June 2, 2020, a jury of experts decided on 13 of these stories, which will be included in the anthology together with submissions from well-known authors. A publication is planned for autumn 2020 in cooperation with the Droemer Knaur publishing house and the Random House publishing group .

Web links

Commons : Sebastian Fitzek  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Official website of the author
• Literature by and about Sebastian Fitzek in the catalog of the German National Library
• Sebastian Fitzek in the Internet Movie Database (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Sebastian Fitzek - Munzinger biography. Retrieved December 4, 2019 . 
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e} THAT! with bestselling author Sebastian Fitzek. (No longer available online.) In: NDR . May 1, 2019, archived from the original on May 3, 2019 ; accessed on December 23, 2019 . 
3. ↑ Johanna Adorjan : Y'know know. Authors, literary agents and publishers chronically despair of this question: How do you write a bestseller? The Berlin-based Sebastian Fitzek, author of psychological thrillers, has the answer. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . October 26, 2016, p. 3.
4. ↑ ^{a b} author Sebastian Fitzek. The more peaceful the view, the more brutal the book. (No longer available online.) In: Berliner Zeitung . January 3, 2014, archived from the original on January 7, 2014 ; accessed on December 23, 2019 . 
5. ↑ Sebastian Fitzek alias Max Rhode: Das Buch zum Buch. Press portal , October 15, 2015, accessed on October 28, 2015 . 
6. ↑ Sebastian Fitzek: "This is my most personal book." (No longer available online.) In: Ruhr Nachrichten . October 26, 2015, archived from the original on November 11, 2017 ; accessed on October 28, 2015 . 
7. ↑ Facebook post by Sebastian Fitzek , accessed on August 4, 2019.
8. ↑ (dps): Sebastian Fitzek separates from his wife. In: The world . August 5, 2019, accessed December 23, 2019.
9. ↑ Prominent supporter Sebastian Fitzek. Website of the federal association “Das Premgeborn Kind e. V. "Accessed September 30, 2014.
10. ↑ A premature birth shouldn't be a matter of luck. Janett's opinion on November 30, 2015, accessed January 23, 2016.
11. ↑ Anke Emmerling: Fitzek Superstar - effective show for the 2016 festival finale. Literaturbüro Eifel e. V., October 30, 2016, accessed December 7, 2016 . 
12. ↑ Sebastian Fitzek: “AchtNacht” - When the mob cannot be stopped. In: Deutschlandradio Kultur . December 1, 2015, accessed March 30, 2017 . 
13. ↑ Pupsi-And-Stinky Eight Night: Pupsi & Stinky, Eight Night and other Fitzek shockers ...;). In: Sebastian Fitzek. February 26, 2017. Retrieved March 30, 2017 . 
14. ↑ eight night: It will soon be eight night . In: Sebastian Fitzek. March 6, 2017, accessed March 30, 2017 . 
15. ↑ Eight night. In: book report . Retrieved March 30, 2017 . 
16. ↑ Book annual charts 2018: Sebastian Fitzek wins again. In: Press portal , December 20, 2018, accessed on January 11, 2019.
17. ↑ Sebastian Fitzek donates a new crime prize. In: boersenblatt.net , February 28, 2018, accessed on February 28, 2018.
18. ↑ Sebastian Fitzek's detective award: The shortlist is set. In: boersenblatt.net, August 24, 2018, accessed on August 25, 2018.
19. ↑ Michaela Kastel receives the Viktor Crime Award. In: boersenblatt.net, November 12, 2018, accessed on November 12, 2018.
20. ↑ What would you say - which authors were you most influenced by? In: lovelybooks.de . LovelyBooks Topics, 2010, accessed September 2, 2016 . 
21. ↑ Christine Brand: Review of The Night Walker. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung. October 30, 2013.
22. ↑ Denis Scheck in the ARD program " Fresh off the press " on November 27, 2015 ( video , 18: 12-19: 14 min.).
23. ↑ Top Ten: Fiction - Hot off the press. In: ARD | The first. Retrieved December 16, 2018 . 
24. ↑ And should I read that? In: spiegel.de, November 13, 2014, accessed on February 6, 2019.
25. ↑ Sebastian Fitzek on the dream ship. In: spiegel.de, October 31, 2014, accessed on February 6, 2019.
26. ↑ Denis Scheck comments on the top ten fiction. In: ARD | The first. December 16, 2019, accessed on December 23, 2019 (video, from 5:52 min.). 
27. ↑ Gold / platinum database of the Federal Association of the Music Industry . Accessed April 19, 2019.
28. ↑ The package. Psychological thriller by Sebastian Fitzek adapted for the stage by Marc Gruppe. In: vvb.de, accessed on March 19, 2020.
29. ↑ Eerily beautiful autumn. In: vvb.de, October 31, 2019, accessed on March 19, 2020.
30. ↑ rich in rows: Interactive novel with Sebastian Fitzek as a Facebook application. In: virenschleuderpreis.de . April 21, 2011. Retrieved August 17, 2017 . 
31. ↑ #wirschreibenzuhause Sebastian Fitzek. Retrieved June 4, 2020 .