1000 Coils of Fear Synopsis
'I have more privilege than any person in my family. And I'm still screwed.' From award-winning author Olivia Wenzel comes a captivating and unsettling literary debut about race, politics, feminism, motherhood, nationality and enduring love.
A young woman attends a play about the Berlin Wall coming down and is the only Black person in the audience.
She is sitting with her boyfriend by a bathing lake and four neo-Nazis show up.
In New York, she witnesses Trump's election victory in a strange hotel room and later awakes to panicked messages from friends.
Engaging in a witty question and answer with herself, the narrator looks at our rapidly changing times and tells the story of her family: her mother, who was a punk in East Germany and never had the freedom she dreamed of and her absent Angolan father. But in the background of everything is the memory of her twin brother, who died when they were nineteen.
Emotional and funny, Olivia Wenzel writes about loneliness and finding joy in life within the roles that society assigns you. 1000 Coils of Fear is a highly original novel both powerfully poetic and full of surprises.
About This Edition
| ISBN: |
9780349702025 |
| Publication date: |
10th November 2022 |
| Author: |
Olivia Wenzel |
| Publisher: |
Dialogue Books an imprint of Little, Brown Book Group |
| Format: |
Hardback |
| Pagination: |
288 pages |
| Primary Genre |
Romance / Relationship Stories
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| Other Genres: |
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| Recommendations: |
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Olivia Wenzel Press Reviews
So exuberant, inventive, brainy, sensitive and hilarious that it's like a pyrotechnic flare illuminating the whole woman, past and present, radiant, unique, a voice and a novel to take with us into the future. -- FRANCISCO GOLDMAN, author of Monkey Boy
Bold and exceptional . . . Her impressive writing, born of a brilliant mind, surprises - stylistically, and by its frankness and associations. An uncompromising consciousness leaps from sentence to sentence, city to city, in love, depressed, alienated, afraid, and contradictory . . . I rode in the passenger seat, beside the beauty and strangeness of 1000 Coils of Fear -- LYNNE TILLMAN, author of Men and Apparitions and Mothercare
Wenzel debuts with a powerful portrait of a woman finding, losing, and rediscovering herself in 21st-century Germany . . . Her simple but affecting story is told through scattered memories and personal histories . . Captivating . . . An exciting, confident debut - Publishers Weekly
An audacious and disturbing novel -- MICHELLE DE KRETSER, author of Scary Monsters
German musician, performer, and playwright Wenzel makes an auspicious fiction debut . . . A prismatic novel, thoughtful and unsettling - Kirkus Reviews
Impressive, relentless, tender - FAZ
This book is a must -- Reader review A strong debut, a touching family story - rbb Kultur
A debut novel as layered and melodic as any symphony or opera. -- Karla Strand - Ms Magazine
Wenzel's unique literary voice carries the reader through meditations on origins, grief, racial identity, love, and belonging. - Booklist
From the moment I started 1000 Coils of Fear I was sucked in by Olivia's distinct style, biting yet swirling. In a bristling translation from Priscilla Layne, the cool, understated prose expresses so much of what goes unsaid about the weight of history, how you are perceived as you move through the world and the choices that come with deciding how you want to live. There is a humour, as we see a living where two people share private jokes about the mucus-y chain smoker next door and the meals that you cook repeatedly at dinner parties because you know they'll always go down well. It is refreshing to read a contemporary book that speaks so much to that period in your life where you are finding your feet, recollecting while plotting. -- Tice Cin
