Katja Oskamp: Die vorletzte Frau

In the organizer's words:

"A wonderful book about love. And about being human." (emotion)

She meets him when she is still young and he is almost old. He, the famous writer. She, who is just starting to write and is the mother of a young daughter. She becomes his pupil, his lover, his confidante, and they both vow to be devoted to each other "with all the tit and tat". A relationship full of lust and devotion and cheerfulness.

But then, when their daughter is in the middle of puberty, he receives a diagnosis that changes everything. The relationship becomes a state of emergency and she turns from lover to carer. She wants to help, she helps, but something is fading, the man in her life is moving away, the time of farewells begins. And something else: a new life.

Katja Oskamp tells tenderly and unreservedly of the transformations that existence holds in store, of fragile lives, of the roles of a woman and of bodies in all their glory and ugliness. Above all, however, she tells the story of a great love.

Katja Oskamp, born in Leipzig in 1970, grew up in Berlin. After studying theater studies, she worked as a dramaturge at the Volkstheater Rostock and studied at the German Literature Institute in Leipzig. So far, she has published the short story collection Halbschwimmer and the novels Die Staubfängerin and Hellersdorfer Perle. In 2019, Hanser Berlin published Marzahn, mon amour, for the English edition of which she received the Dublin Literary Award together with the translator in 2023.