O-Töne: Eva Menasse | Sasa Hanten

Eva Menasse, "Alleinruhelage" (book launch)
After her marriage ends, a woman suddenly finds herself alone in her weekend cottage. This is where she once sought an idyll with her family, and now she wants to make a fresh start. The help she needs has practically fallen from the sky: Alla and Bolek from Poland, two chain-smokers who can do anything. The renovations and setbacks, the burst water pipes and the malice of the neighbouring allotment gardeners trigger many memories and new insights – and as a Viennese woman in a double foreign land, the narrator perhaps perceives some of the pitfalls of German-German history more keenly. Then she decides to sell the house she loves, to move out and set off once more from her ‘stable, solitary retreat’.

Sasa Hanten “Talent for Happiness” (book launch)
Charlotte Maybach and Eby Tusch have known each other since childhood. They grew up together at a boarding school on Lake Constance – a friendship that has endured even through years of separation. In her early thirties, Charlotte leads a successful, respected life as a notary, yet she feels unfulfilled. Eby, the last scion of a Cologne-Vienna showman family, has cared for his father through dementia, taken over the family business and lost a great love. Both find themselves at a point where nothing seems certain anymore. When they meet again, it is not about missed opportunities, but about unanswered questions: How do you want to live once you have discovered who you really are?