The Have-Nots

London, Berlin, New York - three of the world's great modern cities lend themselves as settings for three interweaving storylines in which human destinies hang in the balance. In one of these, Jakob and Isabelle meet at a party and arrange to see each other again on the evening of September 11, 2001. Despite this ill-fated start to their affair, they soon marry and not long after move to London, where Jakob will take the post of a colleague killed in the World Trade Center attack. But both newlyweds soon find themselves seduced by their respective vices, and their relationship, like the world they once knew and the happiness they once shared, proves more fragile and fragmented with each passing day.
In The Have-Nots there is a hollowness to every happiness, a precariousness enveloping every success, and an ambiguity lurking behind each one of life's little certainties. Katharina Hacker writes about love and violence, about destruction and the way global events encroach upon individual lives, about excessive personal liberty and the inability to feel oneself truly free.