Wovon wir leben

A literary novel about the burning topics of the present: The new book by Bachmann Prize winner Birgit Birnbacher

Birgit Birnbacher, the master of "unpathetic empathy" (Judith von Sternburg, Frankfurter Rundschau), succeeds in posing the question of how and what we want to live from in a gripping and poetic language.
A single mistake catapults Julia from her job as a nurse back into her old life in the village. There, everything seems even worse: the factory where half the village used to work no longer exists. The father is in a precarious condition, the mother has left him and the sick brother behind after years of sacrifice and ventured a new start. When Julia meets Oskar, who is recovering from a heart attack in the village, she is jealous at first. Oskar has won a kind of basic income for a year and is making plans. But what can Julia think of for her future?.