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Just Call Me Superhero (excerpt)
Alina Bronsky
Alina Bronsky was born in
Yekaterinburg, an industrial
town at the foot of the Ural
Mountains in central Russia,
and moved to Germany when she was thirteen.
Just Call Me Superhero
is her third novel. After an
encounter with a dog, seventeen-year-old Marek attends a
support group for young people with physical disabilities,
run by "the Guru". Marek sees little connection between the
group's misfortunes and his own. The one exception to this
is Janne, the beautiful young wheelchair-bound woman
with whom he has fallen in love, in this atmospheric
evocation of modern Berlin, a vivid portrait of youth under
pressure.
Translated from German by Tim Mohr.