Nele Pollatschek

End of the year. Tax returns, setting up the crib, writing a novel, quitting smoking – actually, Lars, 49, a budding writer, wanted to take care of everything that had fallen by the wayside in the gap between the years. The plan was to start the new year with a tidy life. But suddenly the week is used up: The house still messy. Life anyway. Lars heads for the first item on his to-do list – and it seems he has to reinvent not only himself, but an entire world.

Nele Pollatschek tells of chaos and the longing for order, of perfect children and imperfect parents… and above all of the difficulty of not postponing one’s life until later.

Nele Pollatschek, born in 1988, lives in the Odenwald and in Oxford. She studied English literature and philosophy in Heidelberg, Cambridge, and Oxford and received her PhD in 2018 on the question of theodicy in the Victorian novel.