Trafika Europe 4 - Armenian Rhapsody

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.

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