Barbara Imgrund

The mute Martha returns to her family’s decaying mountain farm as an old woman. It is an escape from the world, she wants to die: Because once again that brown “worm” is creeping into the valley that brought her so much suffering in her childhood and saddled her with a nameless debt. She doesn’t want to experience once again how this parasite settles in people’s heads and drives them to commit unimaginable acts. And so she stops eating, just as she stopped speaking during the war. But Martha finds the world she wants to escape from in her mouse hole. And wounds that have never healed open up again …

A short story about humanity in increasingly difficult times, which unfolds an unstoppable force.

Barbara Imgrund was born in Lower Bavaria and grew up in the Allgäu. She studied German language and literature in Munich and then worked as an editor for various renowned publishing houses. She has been a freelance editor, literary translator and writer since 1998. Inspired by her voluntary work in the hospice service and in animal welfare, her texts repeatedly deal with the question of how we survive the storms of life and what is really important to us at the end of the day. She has lived in Heidelberg since 2000.

In the Local Monday series

In cooperation with the Literaturherbst Heidelberg