Painted Fires

  • A mesmerizing literary debut capturing the existential weight of an unfulfilled desire for a child
  • For readers of Rachel Cusk, Marlen Haushofer and Martina Hefter
  • English sample translation available soon
  • Topics: friendship, female autonomy, reproductive health, breaking out of norms

Struggling with her unfulfilled desire to have a child, a young woman finds herself in a liminal world, trying to find a way to break free from convention and norm. 

Rebekka is in her mid-thirties, has a degree but works as a sales assistant in a furniture shop. She is in a relationship, longs for a child who does not come, and wonders why this desire is so strong and why it cannot simply disappear. When Rebekka’s best friend Jenny becomes pregnant before her, a noose tightens around Rebekka’s heart. And she is overcome by the feeling that everything in her life is now falling into a fateful order. She embarks on an odyssey through windowless fertility clinics, libraries, the places of her childhood, and into a parallel realm of vivid fantasies. These shifting layers of reality unlock buried desires, threatening to tear her meticulously constructed life apart.

Contact Foreign Rights
  • Publisher: Kiepenheuer&Witsch
  • Release: 13.08.2026
  • ISBN: 978-3-462-01250-7
  • 192 Pages
  • Author: Eva Hegge
Buchcover von Painted Fires: Roman
Eva Hegge Painted Fires
Portrait von Eva Hegge
© P L ZZO photography
Eva Hegge

Eva Hegge, born in 1982, is a film director. Her work includes several short and experimental films that have been screened at major German film festivals. Gemalte Feuer is her first novel.