Ausser sich

Who tells you who you are? This is what Sasha Marianna Salzmann explores in her debut novel "Out of Oneself," along with the insatiable longing for life itself and its challenging boundlessness. Intense, uncompromising, and politically charged in the best sense. From the very beginning, there are two of them: the twins Alissa and Anton. In a small two-room apartment in post-Soviet Moscow, they cling to each other's curls when their parents clash. Later, in the West German province, they roam the halls of the asylum home, stealing cigarettes from the rooms of other families. And even later, when Alissa has already dropped out of her mathematics studies in Berlin because it distracts her from boxing training, Anton disappears without a trace. At some point, a postcard arrives from Istanbul - without text, without a sender. In the shimmering, torn city by the Bosporus and in her own fa...