IN BRIEF Annette Pehnt Haus der Schildkröten (House Of The Turtles) Piper Verlag, September 2006, 192 pp ISBN: 3-492-04938-9 Annette Pehnt's two previous novels have won her distinguished awards. Her themes are outcasts and the excluded, and to them, in this, her latest offering, she adds a third group, the unwanted. Set for the most part in an old people's home, it deals with bewilderment, regrets, misunderstandings, the loss, not the discovery, of sex and desire as death draws near. Yet the book is not glum, and it ends on a classical, even an archetypal, note with the possibility of birth. The final scene - a Christmas party in the home - is brilliant. Pehnt's style is evocative, her insights spot on. Touching and beautiful. Annette Pehnt was born in 1967 and is a writer of novels and short stories. Her first novel, Ich muß los ('I Must Be Off'), won several awards including the Maria Cassens Prize, and Pehnt received the prestigious Jury Prize at Klagenfurt for an excerpt from her second novel, Island 34. Previous works include: Ich muss los (Piper, 2001); Insel 34 (Piper, 2003); Der kleine Herr Jakobi (Piper, 2005) Rights to her previous novels have been sold to the Netherlands, Korea and Taiwan. Translation rights available from Piper Verlag GmbH Georgenstr. 4 80799 Munich, Germany Tel: +49 89 30 18 01 26 Email: nicole.leppin@piper.de Contact: Nicole Leppin