No Part of the World

  • English sample translation by Tim Mohr available
  • Nominated for Children´s Literature Award 2020 (https://www.jugendliteratur.org/english-key-facts)

Overnight, Esther is torn out of life as she has known it to help the community build a new Kingdom Hall in her father’s old hometown in East Germany. While her parents go door-to-door to proselytize as special pioneers of the Watchtower Society, Esther sorely misses her friend Sulamith.

Ever since they were little, Esther and Sulamith have been best friends and shared everything. Yet Sulamith starts increasingly to question the belief system in which the two friends were raised, leading to disastrous developments in the days before Esther’s move. While Esther is still trying to figure out what happened to Sulamith, she stumbles on a part of her family’s history that has always been kept secret from her, until now.

Poetically, eloquently and with irresistible force, this novel leads us into a world that exists right in the middle of ours, and yet is not part of it. At its heart is an unforgettable young woman, who does everything in her power to be able to decide for herself which stories sustain her.

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Denmark: Straarup & Co. / Netherlands: Signatuur

  • Publisher: Kiepenheuer&Witsch
  • Release: 10.10.2019
  • 432 pages
  • ISBN: 978-3-462-05043-1
Cover Download Kein Teil der Welt
Kein Teil der Welt
Joachim Gern

Stefanie de Velasco

Stefanie de Velasco was born in 1978. In 2013, she published her debut novel Tigermilch (Tiger Milk), which was translated into numerous languages and adapted for the big screen. The author was raised as a Jehovah’s Witness and left the religious community at the age of 15.

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