Nina Fiva Sonnenberg

A hot Munich summer: While the whole world is at the outdoor pool, including her friend and her child, Nele Kastner sits at her father's deathbed, waiting with him for death. And although this death is, of course, natural, everything just before the end feels like theater. In the leading role: the missing conversation. Since the father can no longer speak, Nele takes it upon herself to tell their shared story. About growing up in the petty-bourgeois suburban environment of the 1980s and 1990s. About psychological fasting and crumb neuroses, about firsts and lasts, about family rituals and box runs. About what keeps one small and what makes one great. And don’t worry – you wouldn’t believe how much humor can be found in the last stories.

The magnificent debut novel by the Munich musician and presenter, nominated twice for the Grimme Prize: In an addictive sound, Nina Sonnenberg tells ruthlessly, tenderly, and with striking wit about suburban youth in the 90s, about familial influences, about life and death. For all readers of Joachim Meyerhoff, Giulia Becker, and Stefanie Sargnagel.

"A finely and sensitively told story that takes all children of the 80s back to a childhood full of cigarette smoke and Knorr soups" (Eva Karl Faltermeier).

Nina Sonnenberg, The Heart, a Wolf, btb, 2026.