Earthling

Emma Erdling is notoriously broke. It was only with the support of her childless great-aunt that she was able to set up her own PI business under the alias »Andreas von Erdling« in the most expensive district of the city, even though she never intended to solve real cases. Instead, she stages her life as a soap opera and herself as a tough, left-wing investigator on social media, until unforeseen events shatter her comfortable existence and a shitstorm destroys her online presence. But the very next day she is to take on her first, albeit seemingly unsolvable, assignment: Politician Oskar Lafontaine comes to her office and tells her that his wife has been abducted by aliens, he wants her back, money is not an issue.

The search for the abducted Sahra Wagenknecht soon turns out to be a journey into a repressed consciousness, to parts of an identity that was as distant to Emma Erdling at the beginning of the story as a galaxy beyond the Milky Way. At the same time, the novel takes us on an odyssey to the light and dark powers of German history, all the way out into the universe, effortlessly transcending all boundaries of time and space.

»Emma Braslavsky delivers the unexpectable.« Cornelia Geißler, Frankfurter Rundschau

»Absurd. Funny. As rich in detail as a Wes Anderson film.« Nina Apin, taz. die tageszeitung on Leben ist keine Art, mit einem Tier umzugehen

»Apart from its entertainment value, Emma Braslavsky’s book provides a lot of food for thought.« Irene Binal, ORF on Die Nacht war bleich, die Lichter blinkten