Anton and Alma

Anton is Jewish, Alma isn’t. Both were raised in Berlin under very different circumstances and fall in love in their early twenties, in 2018. They move in together, get through the pandemic, and Anton begins a history PhD on the 9th-century mass conversion to Judaism of the Khazars. His obsession with these stories leads him to gradually view his own life through the lens of narratological theory. Anton moves to New York for his PhD, and their relationship comes to a preliminary end. With Anton gone, Alma finds generosity, stability, and acceptance in the local Jewish community, and after a near-death experience, she decides to convert.

After October 7th and with escalating tensions on campus and in his own family, Anton returns to Berlin and to Alma, bereft. Alma does not tell him of her plans to convert, and when Anton finds out, he is vehemently opposed to the idea. Then, a tragic turn of events tears a gash in the fabric of Anton’s life, draining all meaning from it. From this void, he has to look for new ways of making sense of life. Ultimately, he realises that he and Alma had been taking different routes to the same destination, that his secular historicism was not so different to her receptiveness to religion. They both shared a belief in poetic justice, and in single lives and history having narratives and thus meaning.

Anton and Alma is a big love story set against the rifts in contemporary German and American societies and within Jewish communities around the world. It is also about how people create or cling to narratives – whether religious or secular – to imbue the world and our lives with meaning. And about what happens when life seems to make a mockery of these stories.

»[With Misophonia, Vowinckel] has made German-language contemporary literature a more beautiful place, and I'm so grateful for her book and her immense talent.« Christian Kracht, author of the International Booker–longlisted Eurotrash

»Reading Dana Vowinckel means: to suffer, to laugh, to learn, all at the same time. May she please keep on telling stories. I would like to read a hundred more of her books.« Daniela Dröscher on Misophonia

»… this young author writes well and has … a lot to say.« Sabine Rohlf, Berliner Zeitung on Misophonia