At the midpoint of Olivia Wenzel’s zesty debut, the unnamed German-Angolan narrator is labouring through an almighty hangover. While “everything’s spinning and I puke bile onto my toes”, she mournfully “wishes I had a close-fitting wooden helmet to keep my thoughts together, there is no order anywhere”.
Disorder informs the shape and spirit of Wenzel’s unusual novel, which seeks to capture the vertiginous, multifaceted experience of living in contemporary Germany as a queer woman of colour. It is a modishly fragmented work, and largely consists of a female speaker engaging in heated, often seemingly directionless self-interrogation. The protagonist will ask herself such questions as “Do I think of myself as a good friend? (Sometimes. But also an ungrateful one)”, or wonder “Why am I still speaking? (Because you can’t do anything else)”.
