The German Room

Carla Maliandi, Frances Riddle

From Shelf: New discovery - Edinburgh based LatinX publisher Charco Press.

A female protagonist - a young woman - travels from Argentina to Germany trapped by emotional conflicts. When she arrives, she is constantly exposed to all kinds of adventures and incidents, some funny, others tragic.

How do you will a life into order? Adrift in Germany, a pregnant, aimless Argentine and her small circle of friends try and fail to find out.

Fall in Heidelberg, and in a student residence a not-student, a woman from Argentina, is busy not figuring out what to do next. She's pregnant. Shanice, a Japanese student she had barely befriended, has died. Shanice's mother has arrived from Tokyo and will not leave. And Javier Miguel, a fellow Argentine, is frantic that his sister back home might be overly involved with a local psychic. The German Room is a novel of not-moving on, of not-growing up, of not-failing better. As fall turns to winter, things change but nothing is different, and comedy and tragedy are harder to tell apart. And in Carla Maliandi's hands, entropy becomes a vibrant, life-affirming creative force.