Birgit Birnbacher

“The master of ‘unpathetic empathy ‘ ” (Judith von Sternburg, Frankfurter Rundschau).

A single mistake catapults Julia from her job as a nurse back into her old life in the village. There, everything seems even worse: the factory where half the village used to work no longer exists. The father is in critical condition, the mother has left him and the sick brother after years of sacrifice, ventured a new beginning. When Julia meets Oskar, she is jealous at first: he has won a kind of basic income for a year and is making plans. But what is Julia allowed to think about for her future? And what can she wish for?

Birgit Birnbacher, born in 1985, studied sociology and social sciences, before which she worked in development aid in Ethiopia and India. Until 2018 she worked as a social worker, at the same time she began to write. She received the Bachmann Prize in 2019 for her text Der Schrank. Wovon wir leben (2023) is her second novel after Ich an meiner Seite (2020).