A run-down villa in Rome, a mysterious dottoressa, a film director on a couch narrating the story of his life: in her new novel "Golden Sands" Katerina Poladjan pieces together fragments of old Europe to create a cheerful yet melancholic picture of the present day.
In the 1950s, a holiday resort is built on the Bulgarian Black Sea coast: Golden Sands, planned as a shining vision, a place in the sun for everyone. Eli is conceived on the construction site. Sixty years later, he has long since celebrated his greatest successes as a film director and is lying on his analyst's couch in Rome. He speculates and fabricates his family history, which begins in Odessa in the early 1920s, leads from there via Constantinople and Varna in Bulgaria to Rome, and then on to Oranienburg near Berlin.
What to do with the unfulfilled promises of the past?
"A slim, lightweight book that must have somehow slipped through the net on the longlist for the German Book Prize." and "is one of the enticingly shimmering gems of late summer [...]. All the stories contained within are enchanting and captivating." - Frankfurter Rundschau, Judith von Sternburg
"There are not many novels like this [...] in contemporary German-language literature." - Deutschlandfunk Buchkritik, Rainer Moritz
"Elegant and written in wonderful language, I was completely blown away." - WDR 2 am Sonntag, Denis Scheck
"A cut in time that opens up horizons of imagination and fears. [...] great cinema" - NZZ, Paul Jandl
"Katerina Poladjan is a quiet star of contemporary German-language literature." - SWR Kultur, Christoph Schröder
"One of the best new releases available in German this year" - Frankfurt journal, Christoph Schröder
"a cleverly constructed book that reads easily, even cheerfully" - SWR Kultur lesenswert, Christoph Schröder
"The book closes, the pictures remain." - Berliner Zeitung, Cornelia Geissler
