Lesung - "Das Gras auf unserer Seite" von Stefanie de Velasco

With a distinctive sound and great wit, Stefanie de Velasco's new novel tells the story of three women who have no desire for the life model that is intended for them.

Kessie, Grit and Charly have always observed the reproductive urges of their peers with amused amazement. None of them have ever felt the desire to have children. Nor have they felt the need to retreat into a monogamous couple relationship and walk through the world as just us. But now, in their mid-forties, some surprising events call everything into question once again: Charly, an unsuccessful actress, is offered a role in another city. And discovers that she is pregnant - by whom, she is not quite sure. Grit is kicked out of her shared flat and has to move in with her boyfriend, who has been wanting to move in for a long time. But she wants a room to herself, or even better, a whole apartment. While her boyfriend despairs on the Berlin housing market in search of her future nest, she finds refuge in an allotment garden. Meanwhile, Kessie gets closer to her childhood sweetheart Nazim when she travels to her old home to help her ailing mother settle into a nursing home. The only partner who has been by her side in recent years has been her dog Pan. Each of the three women is faced with a decision. And society seems to know exactly how they should turn out.

Stefanie de Velasco, born in Oberhausen in 1978, grew up in the Rhineland as the child of Spanish immigrants. She studied European ethnology in Bonn, Berlin and Warsaw. Her novel "Tigermilch" was published in 2013 and has been translated into numerous languages and made into a movie. This was followed in 2019 by "Kein Teil der Welt", which tells the story of a childhood and youth among Jehovah's Witnesses and was nominated for the 2020 German Youth Literature Prize. She lives as a freelance author with her dog in Berlin.