Seagull Books, 2025

A great novel about origins and identity, about a merciless century in which the world was split between friend and foe.

In 1942, a Norwegian woman travels to Vorarlberg, Austria. She is pregnant and planning on starting a new life here with her fiancé, a Wehrmacht soldier. But for her and her son, Heinz, everything turns out differently – worse.

The only things Heinz Fritz knows for sure about his mother are the stages of her first long journey: Oslo – Copenhagen – Berlin – Munich – Hohenems. It’s detailed in a document he carries with him his entire life: a document from the SS Lebensborn association. The Norwegian woman has taken up with the enemy. And put her trust in the wrong man. For when she arrives in Austria, instead of welcoming her, her fiancé’s family turns her away. And she can’t go back to Norway , because there she's now considered a collaborator…

By interrogating himself thoroughly and uncompromisingly, the novel’s narrator – the woman’s son – tries to solve the mysteries of his origins, to uncover the truth about his parents. A search for clues, at whose end everything changes yet again, revealing a second, “brighter” version of the dark story.

More at New Books in German and KiWi

Alois Hotschnig, born in 1959, is a freelance author. He has won numerous prizes for his works including the Province of Carinthia award at the Ingeborg Bachmann competition in Klagenfurt, the Anna Seghers prize, the Italo Svevo prize for his complete works and the Austrian State Prize for European Literature. His works have been translated into several languages.

Selection: Leonardo’s Hands (1992); Ludwig’s Room (2014); Maybe This Time (2011)