Henry and Paul are strangers when they find themselves sharing a sleeping compartment on a night train from Munich to Berlin. When they begin to talk, their stories appear to be variations on the same theme: young guys adrift in the big city, relationships gone wrong, broken hearts. Henry is running away from a triangle of friendship gone sour; Paul is running away too, but as the night unfolds and the train speeds north across the German landscape, his story turns ominous. What he finally reveals to his unsuspecting traveling companion goes into the darkest sphere of human behavior. Shocking and raw, The Bird is a Raven is the work of a writer at the beginning of a stellar career.

Benjamin Lebert was born in Freiburg, Germany, in 1982. He is the author of Crazy, a best seller in Germany, which was published when he was sixteen years old.