A family novel set against the backdrop of contemporary German history
"Poetically courageous and psychologically confident, Lina Schwenk tells of the fatal happiness drug of symbiotic closeness. A beguiling debut!“ - Angelika Overath
"Not a superfluous word, not a dispensable twist in Lina Schwenk's work.“ - taz
Olivia, Rita and Karl’s daughter, has always been aware of the adults’ fear of another war after 1945, even though there has been peace in Germany for years.
Karl persistently checks the pantry for supplies, and time and again the family seek refuge together in the cellar when their father fears the invasion of the Russians. For Olivia and her sister Martha, it’s a game that they quietly submit to, partly because they have long known that their parents don’t have the words to explain and that the more they ask, the louder the silence becomes. ‘Soon I’ll be dead,’ thinks Olivia too, as her parents’ anxiety gradually becomes her own .
In her first flat of her own, Olivia misses the cellar – the small shelter of her childhood, which at least meant one thing: family time. She only realises the long cracks that extend from her parents to her generation, when she later tries to protect her own daughter from this feeling of threat. But then February 2022 arrives, and what previously seemed like a phantom suddenly becomes frighteningly real