Everything is difficult before it gets easy. With intensity and wit, Daniela Dröscher tells the story of a woman who finally takes responsibility for her own happiness.
Ela has spent her whole life – quite literally – in her mother’s shadow. Her father blamed her mother’s overweight body for the family’s unhappiness. Now an adult, Ela is faced with her own ailing body, which fills her with despair. Just before completing her PhD, she suffers a breakdown. As she unconsciously struggles with the question of whether she truly deserves her place in academia, her body begins to revolt: her throat, her heart, her skin – everything is on fire. And Ela’s panic grows.
Much like her mother’s story – told in Dröscher‘s hugely successful novel Lies About My Mother – Ela’s late-in-life journey of self-discovery and empowerment is masterfully rendered as autofiction: psychologically gripping and deeply moving.
