Award-winning author Nava Ebrahimi immerses us in the world of a provincial backwater, weaving the lives of six people into a stunning social novel that asks whether it is possible to retain our humanity and compassion in the face of adversity. For fans of Jenny Erpenbeck, Dörte Hansen and Lucy Fricke.

UND FEDERN ÜBERALL
(Feathers Everywhere)
by Nava Ebrahimi
Luchterhand/PRH Germany, August 2025

A small town, six people embarking on a new chapter in their lives, and one day that changes everything

The fog lingers over the fields and the canal. In the small town of Lasseren near the Dutch border, it is as if winter were refusing to end. Nothing much happens here, in the flatlands. Anyone looking for work inevitably ends up at Möllring, the gigantic poultry slaughterhouse on the edge of town. Here, a handful of people has woken up this Monday morning with great expectations: single mum Sonia hopes to get a job far away from the conveyor belt and portioning machine; for young engineer Anna, more or less everything depends on today’s trial run of the latest automation solution; meanwhile, Merkhausen – a process optimisation manager with a weakness for Polish women whose wife has left him – is looking forward to a first date tonight; Nassim, a visually impaired refugee from Afghanistan, has got himself entangled with Justyna, who is twenty years older than him, and is convinced his poems will soften the hearts of German bureaucrats; and German-Iranian author Roshi has travelled all the way from Cologne to translate the poems for him.

When a careless cyclist breaks Nassim’s cane right in the middle of town, and the story is picked up by the local radio station, Nassim becomes a local legend – but more than that too: he inspires people to look their truth squarely in the eye.

Nava Ebrahimi, born in Tehran in 1978, is one of Austrian literature’s most exciting new voices. She is the winner of the 2021 Ingeborg Bachmann Prize, and her novel Sechzehn Wörter (« Sixteen words ») won the Austrian Book Prize and the Morgenstern Prize. After studying journalism and economics in Cologne, she became editor at Financial Times Deutschland and at the Cologne-based Stadtrevue. She has been shortlisted for the Open Mike debut prize, and has attended the Bavarian Academy of Writing. Alongside her novels, she also writes a column for the Süddeutsche Zeitung.