The novel Schäfchen im Trockenen by Anke Stelling is about the illusion of social advancement and the experience that one's origins cast a long shadow. At least that's how it seems to Resi, who is making ends meet as a writer. To make matters worse, the apartment she lives in with her family is being evicted.
The main tenant, once a close friend, wants the family out. Resi's old clique - leftists like her, but from a good family - breaks off contact: they now live in a communal house and are offended. For Resi has written about the project in which she did not want to participate, at first only in a newspaper article, but then also in a "bad book". While some have walk-in wardrobes, others just have to look where they are left - Stelling contrasts bitter insights with bitter humour of a kind that is all too rare in contemporary German literature.
Anke Stelling, born in Ulm in 1971, studied at the German Literature Institute in Leipzig. Bodentiefe Fenster was longlisted for the 2015 German Book Prize, Schäfchen im Trockenen won the 2019 Leipzig Book Fair Prize.
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