A moving mother-daughter novel stretching across a century of European history.
DIE VERWANDELTEN
(Penetrating Silence)
by Ulrike Draesner
Penguin Germany, February 2023
A model Nazi mother who teaches others how to raise their children while refusing to speak of the great loss she has suffered; a cook travelling across Germany in the summer of 1945 who would rather make love to women than to her employer; a lawyer and single mother who unexpectedly inherits a flat in Wrocław and discovers a hitherto unknown Polish branch of her family – these women are all bound together by a century of war and post-war life, flight, expulsion and violence.
How do you write about what happens to women in wartime – the way their voices are taken from them, the way they are changed for ever, and the hidden forces that keep them going? In DIE VERWANDELTEN, Ulrike Draesner gives these women their voices back as they reinvent themselves, change language and country, and discover within themselves an unsuspected wellspring of courage, humour and strength. A devastating novel – moving, unsettling, tender and perceptive.
Ulrike Draesner, born in 1962, is a lyricist, novelist and essayist. She studied English, German and philosophy in Munich and in Oxford and has worked as an academic, translator and editor. She has published poetry collections, short story collections, and seven novels, and held visiting professor or poetics lectureship posts at Kiel, Birmingham, Bamberg, Wiesbaden, Hildesheim, at the German Institute for Literature in Leipzig, and at the Swiss Literature Institute in Biel. She spent the academic years 2015-16 and 2016-2017 as a Visiting Fellow at New College, Oxford and at the Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities. In 2018 Ulrike Draesner took up her post as a professor for German Literature and Creative Writing at the Deutsche Literaturinstitut Leipzig. Ulrike Draesner has received numerous awards for her work.
Munich, 1941. Students Hans and Alex don’t seem to have much in common – until, one day, they both duck out of military training to discuss art and literature instead of practice standing to attention. From that day on, they are close friends, and Hans is a welcome guest at Alex’s « discussion parties ». But war is their constant companion, and the urge to speak out against it grows ever stronger within both of them. Their plans are risky, especially when Hans’s younger sister, who mustn’t at any cost find out about their intentions – moves to Munich…
Gayl Jones, who was first edited by Toni Morrison, has been described as one of the great literary writers of the 20th century and was recently a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in fiction. This new collection of short fiction is only the second in her rich career and one that displays her strengths in the genre in many facets. Opening with two novella-length works, “Butter” and “Sophia,” this collection features Jones’s legendary talents in a range of settings and styles, from the hyperrealist to the mystical, in intricate multipart stories, in more traditional forms, and even in short fragments.
Gayl Jones, the novelist Toni Morrison discovered decades ago and Tayari Jones recently called her favorite writer, has been described as one of the great literary writers of the 20th century. Now, for the first time in over 20 years, Jones is publishing again. In the wake of her long-awaited fifth novel, 
WHAT’S WRONG? is author, illustrator, and scientific researcher Erin Williams’s graphic exploration of how the American healthcare system has failed both her and the rest of us. Focusing on poignant, raw, and complex firsthand accounts from four patients, plus Williams’ own personal story, this book addresses identifiable illnesses such as bladder cancer, alcoholism, postpartum depression, abuse, and endometriosis. More broadly, it peels back the layers on the invisible illnesses that come from trauma, often perpetuated by the broken healthcare system.