"a suggestive, highly poetic soliloquy" (Sophie Weilandt, ORF ZIB, August 23, 2026)
"The gem of an extraordinary autumn of books." (Heinz Sichrovsky and Susanne Zobel, NEWS, 27.08.2026)
Nominated for the Austrian Book Prize 2026
A powerful novel about a woman’s life marked by bizarre self-presentations, teetering between psychodrama, mystical delusion, and the grotesque.
A former psychiatrist, accused of sexually assaulting a patient, discovers an old photograph: it shows her as a young woman with her sister at a hotel pool in Luxor. Overwhelmed by the memories, she decides to write down the hidden truth to her lover, who disappeared during that trip. Her letters become a kind of confession. Behind the facade of the prematurely aged girl from a supposedly good family, abysses open up: out of loyalty to her mother and joyless sister, she sabotages happiness, systematically fails in matters of friendship and love—and ultimately even becomes guilty in the name of love.
Among the now-vanished woman’s legacy are numerous notes, observation logs, dream journals, and memory aids, in addition to the letters. They complete the picture of a woman whose face has been robbed by hypocrites and envious people, driven by the desire to be recognized.
Ultimately, she fails in her vain hope for mercy and forgiveness, falsifies her online profiles, lies to her astrologer – and fills her refrigerator with exorbitantly expensive delicacies to feign a life to posterity that she never led.