Eva Menasse, 2014 Writer‐in‐Residence at the Ingeborg Bachmann Centre London and winner of the 2013 Heinrich‐Böll‐Preis, reads from her recent work Quasikristalle (2013) in a bilingual event at the ACF. Eva Menasse is an Austrian author and journalist, who was the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung’s correspondent in Prague and Berlin. She left the paper to write her first novel, Vienna, and now lives and works in Berlin as a freelance author. The English translation of Vienna was shortlisted for the 2007 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in the UK.

»We always confuse our own viewpoints with those of others.«

What do we really know about ourselves? And about others? When the book starts, Xane Molin is 14 years old and experiencing a dramatic summer with her best friend. By the end, she’s a grandmother making one last attempt to change the course of what remains of her life’s journey.

By telling each chapter from a different perspective, Eva Menasse dissects the biography of a woman in her many roles, depicting her as a mother and daughter, as a friend, tenant and patient, as a fleeting acquaintance and an unfaithful wife. Menasse has an unerring eye for women in society, for their human weaknesses and their loveable qualities. Refracted through many different lenses, the novel paints a picture of a woman’s life and of the society she lives in.