Brothers and Sisters. The Years From 1989-2001

“Bursting with life, with great attention to detail and a keen sense of language.”
Knut Cordsen, Bayerischer Rundfunk

Life begins anew on November 9, 1989: Erik Werchow is driving on business for the first time to West Berlin, and has to return to the East by the evening. The first surprise: in the West, the wall is painted in bright colours. The second: from that night on, no one will need a passport any more. The future has arrived.

Birk Meinhardt’s novel is a previously untold story: about people for whom the world was turned upside down, about lives called into question overnight, and a period only ever described from the West’s perspective. Matti, an introvert and idealist, comes into money – literally by stargazing. Britta is desperate because she can’t perform in the circus any more. Only Erik makes a smooth transition from socialist to capitalist advertising. The GDR has often been described. But Birk Magnum now narrates the story of the years after German reunification, and of a family looking for place in a new society, but which end up becoming foreign to itself. Brother and Sisters is a great novel about this other Germany: one that is growing together and still unknown.