Antonio Lazaro, a 23-year-old sailor, gives his mistress the slip in order to sail to the upper reaches of the North Sea and, as he puts it, “find his end”.

Aboard with him on the ship the Admiral Tegetthoff are some two dozen men: sailors, adventurers, soldiers, family men, losers, conquerors and daredevils. They put out to sea under the command of sub-lieutenant Julius Payer and ship’s lieutenant Carl Weyprecht in order to find the fabled Northeast Passage and if possible, to ultimately reach the North Pole.

Among them are those who want to leave behind a bourgeois existence – others are only searching for gold.

Payer wants to be a conqueror; Weyprecht longs to prove that he can navigate a ship through ice.

For the lovesick sailor Lazaro, the journey is a means of finding his long yearned-for death.

After only 40 days the ship becomes hopelessly stuck and in danger of being crushed by the ice. As the crew desperately try to keep the ship afloat only Lazaro seems content, indeed almost happy with the situation.

He fixes Julius Payer’s stare and both men instantly know they will become mortal enemies.

An inexorable northward drift begins.

About the author:

Fritz Lehner was born in 1948.

He is a graduate of the Vienna Film and Television Academy and is a script-writer and director.

He is a member of the German Academy for the Performing Arts and of the Berlin College of Art.

Amongst some of Lehner’s films are: “Schone Tag” (Beautiful Day), script and direction; “Mit meinen heißen Tränen” (With My Burning Tears), script and direction; “Jedermanns Fest” (Jedermann’s Feast), script and direction.

He received the Austrian “Österreichischen Volksbildungspreis” award in 1979 and 1986; the “Prix Italia” in 1982 and 1983; the “Adolf-Grimme-Preis in Gold” award in 1982 and 1986; the “Landeskulturpris Oberösterreich für Literatur” award in 1992 and the “Großen Diagonale-Preis” award in 2002.

In addition, Fritz Lehner has been active in the literary field for many years: "As an author I’m into fairy tales but mine are rooted in reality."

“Я” is his debut novel.

Süddeutsche Zeitung: “Fritz Lehner is one of the most important European directors”.

Frankfurter Rundschau: “Lehner as a director and as a narrator is a dramatist of perspective; a melancholic who suppresses pain and puts human communication into an erotic light.”