Instructions for the Working Day
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€19.99
Shortlisted for the Rubery Book Award 2024
You go too far, my friend. You are near dangerous ground.'
Neil Fischer is travelling to a village in East Germany - his father's former hometown of Marschwald, which he has unexpectedly inherited. Knowing it has been left to deteriorate for decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Neil is determined to restore the derelict village to its former glory, as his demanding late father would surely have wanted. But when he arrives, he is met with hostility, mistrust and underlying menace. His only friend in Marschwald is Silke, who is coming to terms with her traumatic experiences during the Cold War and has recently uncovered a shocking truth.
As tensions rise, a series of surreal encounters force Neil to contend with his own troubled past - but in his present, all signs point to danger.
You go too far, my friend. You are near dangerous ground.'
Neil Fischer is travelling to a village in East Germany - his father's former hometown of Marschwald, which he has unexpectedly inherited. Knowing it has been left to deteriorate for decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Neil is determined to restore the derelict village to its former glory, as his demanding late father would surely have wanted. But when he arrives, he is met with hostility, mistrust and underlying menace. His only friend in Marschwald is Silke, who is coming to terms with her traumatic experiences during the Cold War and has recently uncovered a shocking truth.
As tensions rise, a series of surreal encounters force Neil to contend with his own troubled past - but in his present, all signs point to danger.
Joanna Campbell lives in Gloucestershire. She studied German at university and as a student spent a year living in West Germany. Joanna has worked as a teacher of both German and English, and now writes full-time. Her debut novel Tying Down the Lion was published in 2015, and her short story collection When Planets Slip Their Tracks (2016) was shortlisted for the Edge Hill Prize. Her novella Sybilla won the 2021 National Flash Fiction Day Novella-in-Flash Award. Her short fiction has been published in many anthologies and literary magazines, and has won several awards including the London Short Story Prize.