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Überwintern

Überwintern

ChristianityMemoir
Pages
272
Published
2020
Language
German

Synopsis

Überwintern is the German edition of Katherine May's Wintering, a memoir-essay hybrid about the fallow periods life forces on us and how to live through them.

The book opens with her husband's sudden, frightening illness, an event that brings May's own accumulated exhaustion and depression to the surface after she has already quietly stepped away from her university teaching job. Rather than treat this collapse as a problem to fix quickly, she reframes it as a winter: a necessary season of retreat, rest, and recalibration.

Structured across the months from September to late March, the book pairs the natural world's actual winter — its darkness, its dormancy — with May's own, following her to Tromsø to see the northern lights, into icy open-water swims, and through a Scandinavian Santa Lucia festival, as she pieces together a personal philosophy of rest that doesn't apologize for itself.

Prose complexity
1/10

Vibe

ReflectiveMelancholicHopefulAtmospheric

Genres

Christianity Memoir Essays Self-Help

About the author

K
Katherine May

Katherine May is an internationally renowned writer, podcaster and speaker whose work touches on nature, spirituality, slow living and neurodivergence. Her hybrid memoir Wintering was a global bestseller, adapted as BBC Radio 4’s Book of the Week, and shortlisted for the Porchlight and Barnes & Noble Book of the Year. Her most recent title, Enchantment became an instant New York Times bestseller, and The Electricity of Every Living Thing, her memoir of a midlife autism diagnosis, was adapted a...

Frequently asked questions

  • Is this book strictly a memoir or does it include other types of writing?

    The book is a hybrid memoir that weaves the author's personal experiences with elements of nature writing, folklore, history, and sociology to explore the concept of wintering.

  • Does the author have a podcast related to the themes in this book?

    Katherine May presents a podcast titled The Wintering Sessions, which further explores the ideas and practices discussed in the book.