Eine andere Zeit

The sisters Enne and Suse grow up in the 1970s in a village in Western Pomerania, where there is little more than the bicycle ferry to Usedom and which is so remote that strangers sometimes fear "tipping over the edge". Suse is often ill and Enne has to take a back seat because the parents' care and attention is primarily for Suse, which does not make the relationship between the two sisters entirely easy. There are only a few moments of closeness between them.When Hungary opens its borders in 1989, Suse seizes the opportunity and disappears to the West. She is never heard from again, and for decades the family puzzles over what has become of her. Enne tries her hand as an actress in Berlin, but the big breakthrough doesn't come and she goes back to her home village. Thirty years after Suze's disappearance, a mysterious Mrs. Pohl moves in across the street from Enne, and rumors of who she might be begin to swirl ...

In her new novel, Helga Bürster tells of someone who stayed. And again and again about the aftermath of the Wende, about disappearance and staying, about identity and loss of identity.