Am Samstag gehen die Mädchen in den Wald und jagen Sachen in die Luft

It’s burning. In the woods and on the screens. Fifteen-year-old Era lives with her mother on the edge of the forest and tries to counteract the creeping process of destruction by documenting the extinction of birds. In a stream, she watches her classmate Maja and her sister Merle blowing up hard drives in the neighbouring clearing. Maja is the daughter of two momfluencers who is trying to erase the memories of a public childhood. While Era keeps notebooks, makes drawings and tries to organise all the knowledge she has access to, Maja forms a destructive counterforce. Nevertheless, Era and Maja are connected in their search for intimacy and analogue stimuli. As the turtle dove dies out, the two fall in love. But it is not only the birds that are threatened: when a large-scale fire destroys the forest, the girls also lose a significant part of their habitat.

Fiona Sironic is travelling to Munich to talk to Gina Penzkofer at Werkraum about female anger, forest fires, explosions and expeditions into a possible future.

Confident and clever, Sironic impresses with a new literary voice:
‘A wild, funny, wise expedition into our future.’ Julia von Lucadou, author of ‘Die Hochhausspringerin’

‘Restless, imaginative, confrontational and funny, this book keeps us in suspense until the very last page with its quick wit.’ Jury of the German Book Prize 2025

‘A dense and multi-layered debut whose 200 pages are read in no time at all, but linger all the longer and inspire reflection.’ Alexandra Friedrich, NDR

Fiona Sironic

c

Apollonia Theresa Bitzan

Gina Penzkofer, Artistic Management Werkraum & Habibi Kiosk

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Julian Baumann

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