Brauch Blau

"Brauch Blau" is a novel about maternal instinct, female desire, fears of failure, and self-assertion—angry and profound, ironic and passionate, radical and tender. In rapidly pulsating sentences, with strong language and a painfully delicate gaze at her characters, Julia Malik tells the story of a woman who fights back. She awakens in a hotel bed, naked. Her memories are foggy, only fragmentarily breaking through to her. A realization floods her consciousness like a hot wave: She has two small children! Why is she alone? One thing is certain: She must find them, and quickly. A breathless search begins. She runs. She needs to take control of her life and finally land that leading role in the opera. Everything is at stake: the well-being of her children and her own self-understanding as a career woman and mother, desperately trying to resist the self-sacrifice that her daily life as a single parent demands of her. She is fed up with always trying to please everyone. In "Brauch Blau," a mother sees red. It is the story of a woman who fights: against her societal role that suffocates her, against the father of her children who has not only left her but also oversteps her boundaries, against external control, and ultimately against herself.