Kazimira

A remote place by the Baltic Sea at the end of the 19th century. Kazimira brings her husband Antas washed-up amber from the beach beyond the dune. No one carves it as well as the simple turner. Moritz Hirschberg, owner of the amber factory on the west beach, knows this too. Antas becomes one of his most important workers, but Kazimira has the best ideas for processing and cutting the stones. When the venture of underground mining finally pays off and the mine becomes a success, however, not only envy and resentment, but also anti-Semitism and nationalism flare up in the Empire. And Kazimira has to learn that she must go her own way, all the more so when her son is devastated by World War I. Three decades later, at the end of the World War II, she becomes the last witness to German crimes on Weststrand Beach, once a place of prosperity and progress. And how does this all connect to Nadja, who works in the pit seven decades later, until she is told to dismount the excavator and go sell amber in the shop, like the other women?

In Kazimira, Svenja Leiber tells the story of the largest amber mining operation in history. The rise and decline of the »Anna Pit« and its lasting effect on today’s Russia reflect pressing questions: Where do hatred and violence come from? What happens when life is declared worthless? The women whom the novel sensitively follows across five generations create an alternative world – at the centre of which are Kazimira and her struggle for self-determination.

»What Svenja Leiber attempts here is a little megalomaniacal, it shouldn’t have worked. But then you can't help but bow to the author. Not only does the book contain a great deal of research, Leiber has also put her heart and soul into it. Kazimira deals with German history with all its dark sides, with the fate of some families in times of madness, but above all with the fate of women in a man's world that only reluctantly concedes that freedom belongs to everyone.« Ulrich Greiner, Die Zeit

»Kazimira opens our eyes to the periphery of European history ...« Paul Jandl, Neue Zürcher Zeitung

»The powerful, sensual or sometimes just unadorned laconic language gives Kazimira a poetic quality equal to that of the story arc that is repeatedly condensed into atmospheric snapshots.« Gunda Bartels, Der Tagesspiegel

»A terrific historical panorama.« Georg Leisten, Südwest Presse

»The author interweaves history and the present to create an atmospherically dense narrative and makes the parallels to the renewed rampant hatred of Jewish people and foreigners become apparent ...« Regine Ley, Lübecker Nachrichten

»Kazimira is a melancholic look back at a distant era – at once dazzling and raw, just like amber.« Manfred Hitzeroth, Oberhessische Presse

»In Kazimira, Svenja Leiber brings the past to life with sensitive linguistic power and appropriately grand gestures …« Miriam Zeh, Deutschlandfunk Kultur

»Svenja Leiber [achieves] the feat of illuminating the layers of the history of a little-noticed corner of Europe while making visible very contemporary faces, impressive landscape images and buried connections up to the present ... There has perhaps never been anyone like [Kazimira] in literature.« Natascha Freundel, rbbKultur

»Svenja Leiber lets people experience justice, above all those who are helpless before themselves.« from the laudatory speech on the occasion of the Werner Bergengruen Prize for Svenja Leiber