Long Vacation

It's been months since Schramm quit teaching; they say something happened between him and one of his students. His colleagues knew all along, and used to talk about him behind his back – he who was also so strait-laced.

And indeed, over time Schramm had grown porous in his dealings with the boy, whose radicalness toward himself seemed so similar to his own, and suddenly Schramm heard him say »we« and was spellbound, completely defenceless for a single moment, and then...
You’d think he had more than enough time on his hands now, but the affair is far from over. And so Schramm reluctantly turns to the only person he has left – his brother. Perhaps he’ll be able to help him figure out how one thing could lead to another, how things could have turned so badly against Schramm.

With incredible precision, Nina Bußmann draws us into a parabolic search for clues. While we are still trying figure out who is guilty and who is innocent, we are rushing inexorably toward the moment when one man will risk it all on a single bet.

»Bußmann’s novel is studded with striking turns of phrase and shrewd observations.« Judith von Sternburg, FR

»It is a sign of a great talent, how confidently Nina Bußmann is able to enter the head of this strange man and how self-evident it is for her to take the reader along on the journey. A wise and astonishingly mature debut.« FAZ

»In her scenic naturalism, Nina Bußmann is truly a master of nuance.« Hubert Winkels, Die Zeit

»The language in which Nina Bußmann (b. 1980) introduces us to Schramm is at once tightly controlled and meandering – a self-lacerating Bernhardesque diatribe.« taz

»The dissolution of strict order in the face of the unexpected is her chief concern. In the end it is only the mellifluence of her writing, it is the paradox of an intricately woven fabric of un-certainty that lends weight to her subtle prose. A five-finger exercise, but a virtuosic one. And it makes one curious to see what this accomplished wordsmith will do next.« Die Welt