sold to Denmark: Daniela Dröscher’s LIES ABOUT MY MOTHER

The first license sale for this shortlist candidate is in and it comes from the wonderful small press Straarup & Co. who is taking big steps to built a perfect fiction list: Daniela Dröscher and LIES ABOUT MY MOTHER, Mithu Sanyal and IDENTITTI, Abbas Khider and THE MEMORY FORGER, Julia von Lucadou and TICK TACK, Leif Randt and ALLEGRO PASTELL. I’d say the Who-is-Who of these past years!

Daniela Dröscher and LIES ABOUT MY MOTHER is shortlisted for the German Book Award 2022 and was recommended by New Books in German for their fall issue. Find the English review here:

https://www.new-books-in-german.com/recommendations/lies-about-my-mother/

Daniela Dröscher writes about growing up in a family where one topic dominates everything: her mother’s body weight. Is this beautiful, headstrong, unpredictable woman too fat? Does she urgently need to lose weight? Yes, she does – her husband decides. A decision the mother is subjected to, day after day.

Lies About My Mother is two things at once: the story of a childhood in the 1980s, increasingly overshadowed by the father’s obsession that his wife’s excess weight is to blame for everything he can’t get: a promotion, social advancement, recognition in the small-town community. It is also an examination of these events from the perspective of today: What really happened back then? What was concealed, what was lied about? And what does all this tell us about the bigger picture: about society, which constantly affects us, whether we like it or not?

Unsparingly and convincingly, Daniela Dröscher allows her childhood alter ego to relive the years in which this “chamber play called family” played out. The novel she has written, is as touching as it is smart, it is about subtle violence, but also about responsibility and care. Above all, however, it is a tragicomic novel about a strong woman who never stops fighting to be the master of her own life.