Kiepenheuer & Witsch Verlag 2009

Kathrin Schmidt’s novel, which won the 2009 German Book Prize, tells the story of the loss and discovery of self, the reclaiming of life in the shadow of sickness and death. Helene Wesendahl, a 44-year-old writer, suffers a cerebral hemorrhage and wakes up in a hospital bed, unable to move or speak, with no idea what has happened to her or who she is: “So now she thinks about how she looks. How does she look? She no longer knows, she has no image of herself.”...