"One of the most exciting German-language authors writing today." - ORF
"She is one of the most fascinating voices in German literature, and her books deserve to be read all over the world." - Brigitte
Nava Ebrahimi‘s new novel is set in a small town, where the local poultry factory that kills and processes more than 600,000 chickens a day is both a lifeline and a source of despair and summarizes a single day in the lives of six interconnected characters.
At the center of the narrative is Sonia Bose, a single mother struggling with the pressures of her job at the factory and the challenges of raising a difficult teenage daughter. Over the course of her day, Sonia’s story intertwines with those of Anna, an ambitious engineer in the midst of a personal and professional crisis; Nassim, an Afghan poet searching for his voice in a foreign country; Roshi, a writer with writer’s block looking for inspiration; Justyna, a Polish care-giver torn between love and social prejudice; and Merkhausen, a factory manager under intense pressure to succeed. Each character tries their best to cope with their emotional and existential problems.
As the story unfolds, the climax, in which all six characters come together by chance and the chickens are freed from the factory, serves as a powerful catharsis, a moment of collective liberation and joy that stands in stark contrast to the tension of the day.
Ebrahimi masterfully crafts a narrative in which each character embodies the theme of confinement – whether through societal expectations, personal failure or the relentless grind of everyday life. But in the end, hope, resilience and the human ability to overcome personal and social constraints are stronger than anything else.
>> Sample translation available