Books by Monika Maron

Born in a working-class suburb of wartime Berlin, the author grew up a daughter of the East German nomenklatura, despairing of the system her mother, Hella, helped create. Maron reconstructs their lives from fragments of memory and a forgotten box of letters. This title tells her family's powerful and heroic story.

The narrator relives meeting her lover, Franz, at the natural history museum, when, for the first time in her life, she experiences all-consuming love and absolute happiness. Ultimately the affair founders because of her inability to believe that Franz will actually leave his wife.