Elena Fischer

Elena Fischer (1987) is a German writer. Fischer is coming to the HeadRead Literary Festival to talk about her debut novel Paradise Garden, which quickly won the hearts of German readers. This is the story of three women – daughter, mother and grandmother – and, of course, all the ties between them that create tension and the tensions that strengthen the ties. The story takes place in an unspecified German city and it is told by the daughter, Billie, a late-teenager who is actually called Erzsebet because her grandmother is from Hungary – and when her grandmother unexpectedly visits and stays with Bille and her mother Marika, who lead a rather small suburban life, the lives of the mother and daughter are turned upside down. The ‘Paradise Garden’ denotes an island in the North Sea where Billie goes to find her father after Marika’s passing. The work is both sombre and light, tragic and humorous, and addresses universal themes – identity, family relations, social inequality, loss and self-discovery – through the relationships between women in one family.

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