Clearing

‘When are you coming?’

Four words on a postcard from Kato lure Lev from the village where both grew up under the harsh Ceausescu regime. When borders opened, the outcast girl could not wait to leave. But Lev stayed behind. He felt bound to their remote village in the Carpathians, to the forest and places that formed him.

Journeying into the past, their relationship unfurls through forgotten incidents, underground resistance, repression and adolescence to their first meeting as children – individual moments that illuminate a life.

Set on the periphery of Europe, this award-winning novel, now translated by Ruth Martin, beautifully depicts what it means to belong. A bestseller in Germany and shortlisted for the 2024 German Book Prize. To be published on June 4.