VIRTUAL - Goethe Book Club: "The Liquid Land" by Raphaela Edelbauer

Join the Goethe Book Club, hosted by Tanya Kelley, and discuss works from contemporary German-speaking authors.
Each selection can be read in English translation or the original German; discussions will be held in English.

On Tuesday, February 8th, at 6:00 pm CST, we will meet to discuss The Liquid Land (German: Das flüssige Land), written by Raphaela Edelbauer and translated by Jen Calleja.

About the book:
When her parents die in a car accident, the highly talented physicist Ruth Schwarz is confronted with an almost intractable problem. Her parents’ will calls for them to be buried in their childhood home — but for strangers, Gross-Einland is a village that remains stubbornly hidden from view. When Ruth finally finds her way there, she makes a disturbing discovery: beneath the town lies a vast cavern that seems to exert a strange control over the lives of the villagers. There are hidden clues about the hole everywhere, but nobody wants to talk about it — not even when it becomes clear that the stability of the entire town is in jeopardy. Is this silence controlled by the charming countess who rules the community? And what role does Ruth’s family history, a history she is only just beginning to uncover, play? The more questions Ruth asks, the more vehement the resistance from the residents. But as she continues to dig deeper, she comes to realize that the key to deciphering the mysterious codes of the people of Gross-Einland can only lie in the history of the hole.

About the author:
Raphaela Edelbauer was born in Vienna in 1990. She studied Language Art (Sprachkunst) with Robert Schindel at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. She was awarded first prize at the Rauriser Literaturtage literary festival 2018 for her work Entdecker. Eine Poetik, and won the audience prize at the Ingeborg Bachmann competition in 2018, and the Theodor-Körner-Preis in 2019.  The Liquid Land, published by Klett-Cotta in 2019, was shortlisted for the German Book Prize and longlisted for the Austrian Book Prize. Raphaela Edelbauer lives in Vienna.

Summary: Courtesy of Klett-Cotta