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The narrator, an author, wants to reconstruct a family line of women: her mother Ilna, the grandmother, and a great-grandmother who made hats. With war looming, they left Frankfurt for the Netherlands in 1934, when Ilna was a girl who would never feel truly at home there. Ilna holds the memories but parts with them grudgingly, dropping stray anecdotes, a cursing parrot among them, and accusing her daughter of making things up.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novel

Length

159 pages in the original

Genres

Family, Autofiction (assigned by AI)

Set in

Germany, Netherlands

First published

2002 by Querido

Author's age

55 when first published

ISBN

9789021474700 (original)