Personal Weather [9781632064486]

Overview

In her first novel since the breakout sensation Catch the Rabbit, Lana Bastašić paints the downfall of 21st-century Bohemia and asks what it means to be an artist in times shaped by war, authoritarianism, and the futility of social protest.

Stateless or penniless, discontented or disenfranchised, a generation of artists are drawn to Berlin, washing up in the night clubs, poetry readings, and studio walk-ups of the so-called City of Freedom. Its lavish stipends leave the newcomers dizzy—none more so than one thirty-something Yugoslav with a novel, three languages, and little else to her name. Over street food and lakeside beers, she finds her kin and, for the first time, the promise of home.

But in the aftermath of October 7, 2023, Berlin becomes a different place. It ceases to welcome the voices of refugees, whose stories of survival and escape no longer assuage Germany’s national conscience. As censorship, violence, and loss circle her friends, Senka surprises herself by falling in love: a preposterous act in the face of despair. And yet it will be this love—for a woman, for a city—that lingers.