Possibility of Happiness

Set in the shadow of the GDR, a gripping novel of social unrest and family secrets inspired by the author’s childhood.

Stine was just four years old when the country she was born into ceased to exist. Too young to remember life before the fall of the Berlin Wall, she grows up in a household haunted by loss and fracture. Her family, committed to the socialist ideals of the GDR, struggle to find their place in a newly unified Germany and questions about the past are met with silence. As they retreat further from society, the silence transforms their home into a place of fear. Years later and after giving birth to a daughter of her own, Stine - now an author - sets about uncovering her family history. Told in fragments that blend fiction, poetry and investigative writing, The Possibility of Happiness is a nuanced and suspenseful account of coming to terms with all the complexities of the past.