The novel takes readers to Paris in the 1980s and the present day, on a winding journey of self-discovery, an exploration of the nature of friendship, and a reckoning with guilt and the possibility of forgiveness. In 1989, 21-year-old Marie flees the Netherlands. In Paris, she begins working as an au pair. A foreign city, a foreign language, new people, a new job – in every respect, she’s starting completely from scratch, completely rebooting her life. What does a person do when they have to get back on their feet? They write. It isn’t until half a lifetime later that Marie’s story reaches Flo, the very person Marie once had to flee from. But Flo can no longer read it. All she can do is listen…
Published by Nakladatelství lidové noviny, 2026
© archiv
Sacha Bronwasser (*1968) is a Dutch writer, art historian, and curator. She graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Breda and subsequently spent the year 1989 at the Sorbonne in Paris. She made her literary debut in 2019 with the acclaimed novel Niets is gelogen (Nothing Is a Lie). Her second novel, Listen (2023), also received positive reviews and remained at the top of the bestseller lists for fiction in the Netherlands for over a year. In 2024, her collection of short stories, De lotgevallen (Fates), was published.
Veronika ter Harmsel Havlíková