Jasmin Schreiber
Erfurt Spring Reading
23 April 2026
from 7:30 p.m.
‘A deeply moving, very clear novel about femicide — but at the same time a book about moving on with life.’ NDR Book of the Month
‘A deeply moving, very clear novel about femicide — but at the same time a book about moving on with life.’ NDR Book of the Month
Nine-year-old Maja grows up in a broken family — a tyrannical father, a loving but oppressed mother, and in between, a lot of silence and things that no one explains to her. When Frank, Maja's father, kills her mother, he tears a hole in the world — for Maja, but also for everyone else left behind.
From one moment to the next, nothing is as it was: between grief, custody battles and bureaucracy, Maja becomes a pawn and, amid applications and responsibilities, loses her family, her home, her sense of security and the certainty of where she belongs.
Her godmother Liv becomes Maja's only ray of hope: Liv works as an astrophysicist and inspires Maja with her enthusiasm for the wonders of the universe. At the same time, she struggles with her own insecurities, old fears and the overwhelming task of suddenly having to take on responsibility. And yet Liv and Maja grow closer: looking through the telescope and trying to find answers in the endlessness of space that no one else can give them.
A novel about the echo of violence, about structural failure – and about how a community is shaken when a femicide shatters everything. Told from multiple perspectives, the panorama of a family in a state of emergency and a society that still fails to address the structural core of violence unfolds.
A novel about the echoes of violence, about structural failure – and about how a community is shaken when a femicide shatters everything. Told from multiple perspectives, it unfolds a panorama of a family in a state of emergency and a society that still evades the structural core of violence.
Jasmin Schreiber, born in Frankfurt am Main in 1988, is a biologist and writer. When she's not crawling through a bog looking for short-winged beetles for her research, she's writing her way onto the bestseller list and telling stories about science and nature on the podcast Bugtales.fm. Eichborn has published her novels MARIANENGRABEN, DER MAUERSEGLER, and ENDLING, as well as the non-fiction book SCHREIBERS NATURARIUM, which was named Knowledge Book of the Year 2023. Jasmin Schreiber lives with her husband and three dogs in Hamburg. You can find her on Instagram at @lavievagabonde.
Moderator: Julia Maronde
Reading venue: Kalif Storch
Reading Language: German
