Bettina Hartz’s debut novel is a book, that fascinates with its vivid language and and its magical, fairytale-like style.
Milena is a writer and in her work she invents many things, for example her companion Hans, who takes on more and more real features for her. He is her conversation partner and lover, her other, repressed side, dark, sometimes threatening, but at the same time an emotional support. A support that Milena needs to come to terms with the traumas she suffered in the Balkan war years later in Berlin.
»A magnificent, densely woven novel that takes us to the historical heart of Europe and explores the questions: How to write? How to live? And how to reconcile the two?« (Sebastian Guggolz)
»Bettina Hartz describes so precisely that the narrated world appears as if in slow motion and things begin to speak.« (Julia Encke, Frankfurter Allgemeine Sontagszeitung)