Das Blütenstaubzimmer

Jo, the protagonist of the novel, has just graduated from high school. On a whim, she decides to travel to the southern country where her mother lives with her new husband. They haven't seen each other in 12 years, and the reunion proves to be difficult. She ends up staying in the house of Alois, the melancholic painter, for two whole years, much longer than she had planned. When he dies in a car accident and her mother locks herself in the pollen room, as if she wants to bury herself alive, it is Jo who can save her. However, they do not grow closer. Disillusioned and repulsed by the lies of adulthood, Jo gradually separates herself. Like a snake shedding its skin, she casts off the world of her childhood.

In short, crystal-clear sentences, a portrait of a young woman of today emerges. With just a few strokes of the pen, the author sketches places and non-places for real and staged passions, captivating the reader with images that are surprisingly sharp and precise. "It’s about homelessness, about the fundamental mood of being lost - about my generation," says the 23-year-old author in an interview.

The pollen room can be seen as a successful literary design of a new generation, a literary access to the world of young people at the turn of the millennium.

Zoë Jenny won the 3sat Scholarship at the Ingeborg Bachmann Competition in Klagenfurt in 1997 for her novel. In the same year, she received further awards: the Literature Prize of the Jürgen Ponto Foundation and the aspekte Literature Prize from ZDF.

The pollen room, her literary debut, has so far sold over 100,000 copies and has been translated into 26 languages.