Trennungsroman

Trennungsroman is Anna Brüggemann's debut novel, a close, day-by-day account of the end of a long relationship.

Thomas and Eva have been together for eight years. When Eva comes home from an extended stay abroad, the natural next step would be marriage, a family, the life they've been building toward. Instead, Brüggemann counts down the last thirty-one days of their relationship, alternating between both partners' perspectives and dwelling on the small gestures, misreadings, and accumulated hurts that finally end it.

The novel is less interested in a single dramatic rupture than in how a couple arrives at the decision to leave — the moment, buried somewhere in ordinary days, when staying stops being possible. It won the Debütpreis at lit.Cologne.