"Will have you gripped from the very first page – and leave you breathless at the end. Wild, fierce, moving and lyrical." Doris Knecht
Hannah Häffner’s enchanting novel The Giantesses is set to cause a sensation. — Peer Teuwsen / Neue Zürcher Zeitung
Hannah Häffner tells the story of three headstrong women from a Black Forest village and thoroughly strips the idyll bare—making it all the more irresistible. — Stefan Kister / Stuttgarter Zeitung
With The Giantesses, Hannah Häffner has made a powerful entrance. A captivating novel. — Silke Arning / SWR Kultur
A little Black Forest village is home to three tall, thin women. They tower over everyone else, and are never quite considered part of the community. Yet this is where their roots are, and they do what they can to make a life for themselves within the village’s narrow confines. There is quiet Liese, who works all hours of the day in her butcher’s shop; her daughter Cora, angry Cora, who leaves the village the second she has a chance to, and will learn that returning home doesn’t mean you’ve failed; and Eva, Cora’s daughter, who loves the forest – but doesn’t know it yet.
Dark, with moments of exquisite humour, written in a style that is pithy yet also vivid and delicately lyrical, «Giantesses» is a subtly observed tale of three women stretching from the 1960s to the present day. An unforgettable novel about the yearning for freedom and our desire to put down roots, about mothers and daughters, and about the forces of nature.