Separated from his parents at six, Benedict Wells poured his turmoil into The End of Loneliness, a tear-jerker that is taking Europe by storm. We meet the German wunderkindAt 34, Benedict Wells has already published four novels, nearly finished his fifth, and a short story collection is due later this year. Basic maths suggests that he must be cranking out literary works at an alarming rate, so it is a surprise to hear him say that his last - and first to be published in the UK this month - took seven years to write. The End of Loneliness is already a bestseller in Wells´s native Germany. Still, seven years sounds agonisingly slow, as if this book were somehow out of sync with his precocity. But, then, it presented him with an unprecedented personal challenge.`When I started to write the book, I was 24, and it was too big for me,` Wells says. `I had to become the writer that was able to write the book.` I was using my experiences of loss, loneliness ... the story is fictional, the ink is trueHe sold his first novel at 23, insisting on a no-ebook clause: `I thought other writers would do it too. None did`He changed his surname to dissociate himself from his grandfather, who was the head of the Hitler Youth Continue reading...
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