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Book Synopsis"Sandra Hoffmann is one of Germany's most exciting contemporary writers. [...] An incredibly dense, finely woven text that immediately grabs you and pulls you mercilessly in." Brigitte Woman. Sandra Hoffmann's "Paula" is a moving piece of autofiction about the writer's relationship to her grandmother, a devout Swabian Catholic who refused to reveal who fathered her child in 1946. Growing up in a family where silence reigns, Hoffmann asks: What kind of person, what kind of writer, does this environment produce?
Trade Review"'What makes a person?' asks the narrator of Paula, as she sets out on a quest for the woman behind her elusive late grandmother. A memoir written not to reminisce, but to smash the silence that sneaks up on all families 'like a virus': this is autofiction at its most meaningful, tapping into her child's spry imagination to fill in the gaps of wizened adult memory. There is so much clear-headed and effortless wisdom in Paula, and we have Katy Derbyshire to thank for an English text that reads just as clearly and effortlessly." Sophie Hughes, translator of Fernanda Melchor
