Three Weeks in August

A remote holiday house on the French Atlantic coast. This is where Elena wants to spend three relaxing weeks with her children. Her husband has stayed behind in Germany – their marriage has been shaky of late. But Elena has taken her babysitter, Eve, and one of her thirteen-year-old daughter’s friends along with them. But day after day, what begins as a restorative break is placed under threat, both from without and within. The forests, tinder-dry from the drought, are engulfed in flames, unannounced guests show up, conflicts come to a head – fuelled by jealousy, mistrust, and complex relationships. Until one of the girls suddenly disappears.

Three Weeks in August is a densely constructed chamber play set against the searing heat of summer. Everything seems harmonious, but this idyllic scene conceals dark depths. Just one insensitive remark, one false accusation, and the complex web of relationships threatens to tear apart. Nina Bußmann tells all of this with great psychological finesse and a finely tuned ear for tension.

»A masterpiece.« Paul Jandl, NZZ

»Nina Bußmann is a master of psychological realism.« Ronald Düker, DIE ZEIT

»[Three Weeks in August] develops a pull like the breaking waves of the Atlantic.« Tina Hartmann, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

»In her fourth novel, [Bußmann] once again shows that she knows how to disconcert readers, while at the same time capturing a little piece of life, depicting it with a rare realism and uncanniness. … Her feel for the little incongruences and uneasinesses in communication is immense.« Judith von Sternburg, Frankfurter Rundschau

»Bußmann narrates [the story] in poetic yet wonderfully clear language, in which the voices of Elena and Eve complement one another as if in a dialogue. Bußmann has a fine feeling for observations of nature and for interpersonal conflicts, which she dissects so brilliantly.« Jonathan Böhm, SWR Kultur

»Nina Bußmann has written a finely wrought psychological chamber play … Three Weeks in August is a glimmering feast of the in-between and a precisely narrated tableau of all the difficult-to-define emotional states that ultimately shape our lives much more than those that are clear and unambiguous.« Andrea Gerk, WDR 3

»[A] delicately woven piece of prose … Bußmann evinces a real feel for the psyche of her terribly lonely heroines; the text also glistens periodically with descriptions of nature.« Carsten Otte, wochentaz

»Nina Bußmann produces masterful, precise descriptions in an artful and at the same time lucid language.« Deutschlandfunk Kultur

»The psychology of its characters makes Nina Bußmann’s novel utterly convincing.« Ö1, Ex Libris

»A haunting chamber play set on France's Côte d'Argent.« Theresa Schäfer, Stuttgarter Zeitung