1000 Coils Of Fear A Novel Olivia Wenzel Priscilla Layne Translation by Olivia Wenzel, Priscilla Layne (translation) 9781646220519, 9781646220502, 164622051X, 1646220501 instant download after payment.

Longlisted for the National Translation Award

A young woman attends a play about the fall of the Berlin Wall—& realizes she is the only Black person in the audience. She and her boyfriend are hanging out by a lake outside Berlin—and four neo-Nazis show up. In NY, she is having sex with a stranger on the night of the 2016 presidential election—and wakes up to panicked texts from her friends in Germany about Donald Trump’s unlikely victory.

Engaging in a witty Q&A with herself—or is it her alter ego?—she takes stock of our rapidly changing times, sometimes angry, sometimes amused, sometimes afraid, & always passionate. And she tells the story of her family: Her mother, a punk in former East Germany who never had the freedom she dreamed of. Her Angolan father, who returned to his home country before she was born to start a second family. Her grandmother, whose life of obedience to party principles brought her prosperity & security but not happiness. And her twin brother, who took his own life at the age of nineteen. 

Heart-rending, opinionated, & wry, Olivia Wenzel’s remarkable debut novel is a clear-sighted & polyphonic investigation into origins & belonging, the roles society wants to force us into & why we need to resist them, & the freedoms & fears that being the odd one out brings.

°°° 

Olivia Wenzel was born in Weimar, Germany. Her dramatic works have been staged in Munich, Hamburg, & Berlin. Wenzel also works as a musician & a performer. In 2022, she will lead a series of multidisciplinary workshops for young adults of color at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin.

Priscilla Layne is the author of White Rebels in Black: German Appropriation of African American Culture.