As in die mond

Twelve linked stories, steeped in food and its smells, follow knotted relationships and the long shadow of an old trauma that comes into focus story by story. The first takes Joan of Arc’s mother to Notre-Dame in 1455 to clear her daughter’s name, and her lament for the daughter she once had sounds through the whole book. Four generations of women are split apart by one event in the past: a teenage girl grows up to be a psychologist, some mothers choose distance from the girls they bore, old women and their grandchildren find their way to each other, and some spend decades longing to meet. Tarts, Picasso’s harlequins, a bowl of pebbles and a ringing bell recur from the Paarl and Cape Town to New York, Greece, France and Marrakesh, while one of them has lost years of memory.

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About the book

Form

Short stories

First published

2017 by Queillerie

Author's age

45 when first published

ISBN

9780795801358 (original)