HAMBURG NOIR

Fourteen new stories emphasize the contrast between Hamburg as a home for the affluent and “a place for the stranded.”

Nowhere is the disparity between Hamburg’s powerful and powerless starker than in Zoë Beck’s playlet “Abreast Schwarztonnensand,” in which the heir to a shipping fortune tries to evade responsibility for a tragedy caused by his yacht. But some of the most chilling tales feature power differentials that are more psychological than financial. In Nora Luttmer’s “Ant Street,” the owner of a modest pho joint struggles with gangsters who want protection money. Till Raether’s “I’ll Be Gone Again in a Minute” gives a prescient look at what happens when a successful businessman loses it all in a messy divorce—an eerie prefiguration of the streaming hit Your Friends & Neighbors. In Bela B. Felsenheimer’s “Who’ll Look After Our Women if We Don’t,” a former rock star falls victim to his obsessive concern with his daughter. Frank Göhre’s “The Outer Facade” presents a construction worker undone by his obsession with a woman who’s not his wife. Brigitte Helbling shows that even an obsession with art and reality can have an unhealthy outcome in “Aikido Diaries.” A familiar type of predator disrupts a young boy’s summer idyll in Kai Hensel’s “The Girl at the Dom.” And in Timo Blunck’s “Angel Fricassee,” it’s hard to tell who’s the predator and who’s the prey.

Hamburg certainly deserves a “noir” to call its own, and Karsten is clearly happy to provide one.