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The day I learned to fly (novel excerpt)
Stefanie Kremser
Stefanie Kremser was born in
Duesseldorf, Germany in
1967, and grew up in São
Paulo, Brazil. She studied
documentary film at the
University of Television and Film in Munich, and lives with
her husband, the Catalan writer Jordi Puntí, in Barcelona.
The day I learned to fly
is her third novel (first published in
Germany as
Der Tag, an dem ich fliegen lernte
last year).
After Luisa’s life is saved by an Englishman just after birth,
it leads her, later in life, to delve into the past both of her
own family, in a small Bavarian town, as well as in Brazil.
In compellingly beautiful prose with unexpected turns, she
fabulates outward the strange consequences of emigration,
the drive to unearth one’s origins, and the legacy of family
legends.
The excerpt here is chapter one of this novel. It does not yet
have an English-language publisher. It is translated from
German by the author, with the help of Julie Wark.