Nelka

Lviv, 1941. Sixteen-year-old Nelka is picked up by soldiers and taken west with a large number of other women and girls. They end up on an estate in northern Germany, where they are forced to carry out hard labour. Nelka’s father had taught her about fruit-growing early on, and even as a little girl, she had helped him to graft his apple trees. Thanks to this knowledge, she is initially able to avoid the violence of Marten, the manager of the estate. She plans the layout and maintenance of the orchard, and his apple trees make him a wealthy man after the war is over. Decades later, Nelka returns to the site of her suffering. She wants Marten to remember the very things from which she is seeking to finally free herself.

In her new novel, Svenja Leiber reveals the traces left behind – on the present and in the landscape – by the violent history of the twentieth century and by the forced labour of the Nazi regime. She tells stories of women whose knowledge and bodies were exploited, and who banded together as friends to resist humiliation and brutality. Nelka sheds light on their fate in an insightful and sensitive way – preserving their memory.

»Nelka is a novel you don’t forget: a striking quest for literary justice.« Daniela Dröscher

»I was captivated from the very first page, Svenja Leiber tells the story of Nelka in such a heartrending and tragic way, but also with a lightness of touch. A story about resistance and courage in the darkest of times.« Kristine Bilkau

»Svenja Leiber delves into the abysses of Central European history with nothing but her uncompromisingly precise language. With this language, she surveys the essence of human beings. In the process, she produces what might be the only true form of poetry – that of resistance against inhumanity and against forgetting. Making it also a poetry of hope.« Matthias Nawrat

»In her sixth novel, [Leiber finds] a genuinely fresh language: without sentimentality and feigned melancholy, sometimes severe, unagitated; and sometimes even poetic.« Rose-Maria Gropp, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

»A novel like a ›Gold Pepping – the finest of all the apples‹.« Angela Wittmann, Brigitte

»In her new novel Nelka, Svenja Leiber unfurls an atmospherically dense narrative about memory, guilt, and the long echo of historical violence. … With unflinching precision, the author traces out how Nelka’s story … has been inscribed in landscapes, biographies, bodies.« Deutschlandfunk Kultur

»A multilayered novel about guilt and memory that leaves a lasting impression.« freundin

»In calm, precise phrases that only intensify the clarity of the many subtle nuances, in Nelka, Svenja Leiber tells the deeply tragic story of a silent, rebellious survivor. At the same time, in this woman, the entire history of injustice is reflected, of abduction, violence, abuse, and dependency, which leave their traces not only on bodies – particularly the bodies of women – but also on the landscape, which was shaped by the hands of enslaved people in ways that remain visible even today.« Julia Kospach, Falter

»From one little apple tree, Svenja Leiber develops a beautifully poetic novel about the traces of history whose effects reach all the way into the present, and even into the landscape.« hr2

»A deeply moving book that rouses the readers and encourages us to remember.« Lola Fröbe, Elle Online

»Poetic, and yet very clearly written. An important book.« Beate Rottgardt, Ruhr Nachrichten 

»Nelka narrates modern history. From a little apple tree, Svenja Leiber develops a big novel with psychological understanding and poetic passion.« Carsten Hueck, Deutschlandfunk Kultur

»A sensitive, powerful novel about trauma, survival, and memory.« Tachles »A highlight of this literary spring.« Julia Schmitz, tipBerlin

»Nelka … is a masterful book, precise, illustrative, and entirely unsentimental. And this is precisely what makes such an impression. The author writes with a breathtaking feel for the key details. Nothing feels artificial. The construction – two layers of time, two perspectives – is sound..« NZZ am Sonntag

»Svenja Leiber tells the story confidently, set against a well-researched backdrop.« Eva Behrendt, wochentaz

»Author Svenja Leiber manages to give faces the abstract stories of forced labour. Nelka’s hopes and dreams and her eternal struggle to never lose her will to live in the face of humiliations: the author describes all of this with a lightness of touch, that finds an appropriate approach for what is actually a heavy topic full of bitter melancholy. In the process, she has created a strong female character as her heroine.« Manfred Hitzeroth, Oberhessische Presse

»Not a trace of cheap tricks, but a testament to history that rapidly leaves us speechless. Great literature!« literaturblatt.ch

»A gripping but also poetically written book. Svenja Leiber tackles this abyss of German history respectfully, without voyeurism.« Michael Husarek, Nürnberger Nachrichten

»This wonderful, tragic, and yet also light novel poses the big question of whether there is a form of final justice.« Daniel Kaiser, NDR

»This chapter of history has rarely been recounted more strikingly. Like a mosaic, the author pieces together an image of violence, dependency, abuse, and exploitation that not only Nelka has to bear, but also the women around her who share her fate in the novel. … A book that will stay with you for a long time.« Angela Gutzeit, Deutschlandfunk

»A moving novel … with her crystal-clear but highly visual language and her skilful shifts of perspective, Leiber suspensefully steers the plot of the novel towards the confrontation between her two protagonists.« Ebba Hagenberg-Miliu, General Anzeiger Bonn

»A moving work.« Sabine Tholund, Kieler Nachrichten

»With Nelka, Svenja Leiber brings a significant chapter of German history back into public perception and the collective memory. Her new novel, composed in a glittering linguistic beauty, finds the right words and turns of phrase both for the atrocities and for the humanity that existed in inhuman times, and a never-ending affirmation of life – despite everything.« Constanze Matthes, Zeichen & Zeiten