“Rina Schmeller […] writes with empathy but eschews all sentimentality, revealing not only the full horror of her situation, but also love in all its facets.” —Jenny Erpenbeck

CO by Rina Schmeller
Penguin Verlag/PRH Germany, March 2026

They met on a bridge. They recognised a kindred spirit in each other. They fell in love. And now they have decided to share their lives with each other, regardless of the drug to which he is addicted, and which will henceforth govern her life too. She becomes entangled in his addiction, and starts to orbit him like he orbits the drug, both calm centre and third party. She leaves again and again, to escape the violence, but always comes back. Almost always.

CO is a story about empathy and creeping self-sabotage, about the dynamics of addiction – which affects us all – and about what life is like when you’re co-dependent. Yet it is also the story of a woman’s empowerment and liberation, who finds the strength to let go. And as she embarks on the long and tough road to survival, she gradually regains her independence and finds her way back to herself. A powerful, elegant novel about regaining your inner freedom, sober, quiet and fiercely honest.

Rina Schmeller, born in 1986, studied creative writing in Leipzig and literary studies with comparative literature in Berlin. She has been awarded several fellowships and was a member of the 2020 prose writers’ workshop at the Literary Colloquium in Berlin. In 2024 she published the essay Bedeutung erleben (‘Experiencing meaning’, Edit no. 91) about writing « Co ».