Literature LIVE

Annett Gröschner tells the story, masterfully and with empathy and humour, of an ordinary family in the 21st century, whose mothers, daughters and granddaughters all have one thing in common: the ground beneath their feet is thin, and it is still vibrating. Beneath it lies the echo chamber of the 20th century, with its world wars and dictatorships; above it, a web of stories and memories, polyphonic and intricately woven.

Magdeburg, summer 2013. Four sisters, all in their seventies, meet once a week to play skat. They are divorced; their husbands are dead or confined to their homes; their children are scattered across the globe; their grandchildren are almost grown up. They were called the ‘Daughters of the Elbe’ when they were young, because they used to swim across the Elbe when nobody else did anymore. This summer, the water level of the Elbe rises higher than ever before in the city’s history. It is as though the floodwaters are washing the past to the surface: what was the story behind their parents’ love? What about the air raid in which Judith’s brother was lost? What of Barbara’s separation and Judith’s time in prison? The suicide of Elisabeth’s daughter? And why has Selma’s daughter never been in touch again?

Annett Gröschner, born in Magdeburg in 1964, lives in Berlin and works as a writer. She has received numerous awards, including the Grand Berlin Art Prize and the Mainz City Writer’s Literature Prize. Her most recent novel, *Schwebende Lasten* (2025), won the Evangelical Book Prize and the LiteraTour Nord Prize, and was shortlisted for the German Book Prize and the Wilhelm Raabe Literature Prize.

IN GERMAN

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