A child is found standing on the street with an empty bucket in her hand and no memory of her name, her family or her past. Elsewhere, a girl grows up surrounded by familiar faces - a wet nurse, a piano teacher, a gardener, a best friend and a distant mother - but soon finds them slipping mysteriously from her life. In the company of these girls, we are compelled to tread the uncertain and spiky terrain of memory, where words are dropped like clues to reveal what has been hidden, forgotten or erased.
'With the detached spare prose and mysterious internal logic of a fairy tale, the writing has a dark, transformative power - it gets into the blood stream and refuses to leave. Beguiling and original' ― The Times
'Intense and beautifully written' ― Time Out
'Erpenbeck excels as miniaturist, examining the psychology of her blank-eyed outsider with language as sharp as a scalpel' ― Guardian
'The kind of stories that enter the imagination by stealth ... Like dysfunctional fairy tales, these beautifully written stories explore the shifting sands of memory and identity' ― Belfast Telegraph
'Don't try to learn too much about the origins of these two spare and spooky novellas before you submit to their uncanny mood ... What lies beyond ambiguity, in Susan Bernofsky's pin-sharp translations, is Erpenbeck's power to grip, chill - and haunt' -- Boyd Tonkin ― Independent
'These two novellas showcase Erpenbeck's disconcerting material and her pared-down style ... The subtle interplay of childish interpretation and adult euphemism, gradually unravelling its grim meaning is thoroughly chilling' -- James Urquhart ― Financial Times
'I haven't read anything this good - this bracing, unflinching and alive - for a long time' Nicole Krauss, author of The History of Love
About the Author
Jenny Erpenbeck is the author of The Old Child & The Book of Words (2008), Visitation (2010) and The End of Days (2014, winner of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize), and Go, Went, Gone (2017). as well as Not a Novel: Collected Writings and Reflections (2020). Her work is translated into over thirty languages.
