Mutabor – Scheuer Norbert (2024)

The latest novel by the author of the acclaimed bestseller Winter Bees is a poetic work about the weight of secrets, painful beauty, but also about the power of stories and liberation from enchantment through words. Orphaned Nina is a young abused girl with scars on her soul and body, desperately trying to learn anything about her origins, about who her father was, and where her mother, of whom she has only vague memories, has disappeared to. She feels cursed and seeks a magical formula that would free her from this curse, just like the caliph and his vizier transformed into storks in Wilhelm Hauff's fairy tale. She is like one of the nymphs that emerge in mythological metaphors throughout the novel, an innocent creature in a brutal world. And everyone who knows anything about her past or her parents stubbornly remains silent. When Nina learns to read and write, her world transforms into a mythical and fairy-tale place, through which she gradually uncovers the real world and approaches the revelation of the secret that has been persistently kept from her for many long years. Norbert Scheuer, with great sensitivity, tells the story of a lonely young woman searching for her history, belonging, and happiness in a poetic and thrilling manner in his new novel.