FOR READERS OF ELENA FISCHER AND OLGA GRJASNOWA • FAMILY SAGA FROM THREE PERSPECTIVES – THREE WOMEN AND THREE GENERATIONS

A vivid novel about the complicated love between mothers and daughters, about fleeing into the world and about how we can forgive each other.

The grandmother is one of the first ever female chemists. The mother is a distinguished doctor. The daughter is a computer science student. Science is the one thing they all have in common. But the bond between the generations is broken: Lucy has not spoken to her mother for years. Until suddenly a piano is delivered to her apartment. It is the Steinway on which Lucy learned to play as a child. She hates this piano. It reminds her of everything she had wanted to leave behind: the gilded cage of her overly sheltered childhood, the high expectations of her mother, and the lack of closeness between them. When her grandmother’s Polish maiden name surfaces along with the piano, Lucy spontaneously catches the next train to Sopot, the only link she has to her grandmother. She needs to tie up the loose threads of her family in order to take control of her own future.

Paola Lopez was born in 1988. She is a mathematician and is doing an interdisciplinary doctorate on artificial intelligence. She is currently a research associate at the University of Bremen. She was awarded the Theodor Körner Prize in 2023 for her work on her debut novel ‘The Sum of Our Parts’. Paola Lopez lives in Berlin.