The Skin

Maren Wurster’s story of the end of love is told as if it were an act of God.A young woman is abandoned by her lover, spurred on by an unfamiliar feeling and, following an impulse, sets off on a journey. At the end, we see a changed world through her eyes.

Vic is looking forward to leaving the city for a few day’s break with Karl – just the two of them. But then Karl takes a trip with his ex-girlfriend and their daughter to the Baltic Sea and stops answering Vic’s messages. This is more than she can take. She gets on her bike and sets off. To follow him? At first, she cycles along canals, lakes and through forests. She stays overnight at a campsite, where she has an intimate encounter, all the time checking her phone. Finally, she carries on through a landscape that gradually becomes more alien – and yet is strangely familiar. Something in Vic starts to change, something peels away and a very different, uncanny side to her emerges. Lying at the top of her rucksack is a stone. The Skin is a story of a woman snubbed and transformed. Maren Wurster tells it with the taut force of an animal ready to pounce.