We Would Have Told Each Other Everything - by Judith Hermann (Paperback)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

A wise and subtle work that explores the refractive power of memory, and what it means to exist in the lives of others-from one of the most highly regarded writers working in Germany today.

When Judith Hermann runs into her psychoanalyst in the middle of the night on Berlin's Kastanienallee, the meeting sparks an exploration of the moments and memories that have made a life: an intense friendship with another young mother; an unconventional childhood with long summers spent on the German coast; and the ties of familial trauma that echo through generations.

In three interconnected sections at once confessional and lyrical, We Would Have Told Each Other Everything explores how the life and work of the writer converge and depart from each other when memory is no longer reliable and dreams intrude on reality.

Review Quotes

"[D]eeply affecting... the work is tightly and satisfyingly unified by the depth and intelligence of the narration. Readers are fortunate to have this remarkable meditation on family, identity, and writing from a master storyteller." --Publisher's Weekly

"Very occasionally a book comes along that feels as if it were written just for me, and this is one of those rare books. All my life's defining concerns, as a writer and a woman, are here - ageing, home, the past, losing people, secrets, childhood, strategies of disclosure, the purpose of art and the relationship it has to life - god, that is an ongoing riddle - and Hermann conveys and examines them with generosity and honesty and insight. This book stimulated my mind and touched me to the core." --Claire Louise-Bennett, author of Pond

Judith Hermann understands better than anyone that something unspoken must lie at the core of every story. We Would Have Told Each Other Everything is a precise meditation on the mysteries and risks of storytelling - and a haunting account of a life lived in close communion with ghosts and dreams, with chosen and given families. Just like in her stories, Hermann never draws too close to the shadowy center from which everything feeds." -- Dorothee Elmiger, author of Out of the Sugar Factory

About the Author

Judith Hermann was born in Berlin in 1970. She is the author of several novels and story collections, including Alice, which was shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize; Where Love Begins; and Summerhouse, Later, which won the Kleist Prize. Her novel Daheim (Home) was a Spiegel bestseller, won the Rheingau and the Bremen Literature Prizes, and was nominated for the Leipzig Book Fair Prize. Her work has been translated into thirty-five languages, and a number of her short stories have been adapted for film. She lives and works in Berlin.

Katy Derbyshire is the translator of contemporary German writers including Inka Parei, Heike Geissler, Olga Grjasnowa, Annett Gröschner, and Christa Wolf. Her translation of Clemens Meyer's Bricks and Mortar won the 2018 Straelen Prize for Translation. She is the cohost of a monthly translation lab and the bimonthly Dead Ladies Show.