About the book
Publisher: Kiepenheuer&Witsch 
Release: 09.09.2021 
English title:  My Mother’s Silver Fox
224 pages 
ISBN: 978-3-462-00213-3 

A real-life fate transformed into great literature: about a person who refuses to be broken and a son’s touching declaration of love for his mother
Recommended by New Books in German (Fall 2021)
English sample translation by Tess Lewis available
 
A great novel about origins and identity, about a merciless century in which the world was split between friend and foe.

Synopsis
In 1942, a Norwegian woman travels to Vorarlberg, Austria. She is pregnant and planning on starting a new life here with her fiancé, a Wehrmacht soldier. But for her and her son, Heinz, everything turns out differently – worse.
The only things Heinz Fritz knows for sure about his mother are the stages of her first long journey: Oslo – Copenhagen – Berlin – Munich – Hohenems. It’s detailed in a document he carries with him his entire life: a document from the SS Lebensborn association. The Norwegian woman has taken up with the enemy. And put her trust in the wrong man. For when she arrives in Austria, instead of welcoming her, her fiancé’s family turns her away. And she can’t go back to Norway either, because there she is now considered a collaborator…
By interrogating himself thoroughly and uncompromisingly, the novel’s narrator – the woman’s son – tries to solve the mysteries of his origins, to uncover the truth about his parents. A search for clues, at whose end everything changes yet again, revealing a second, “brighter” version of the dark story.

"'My Mother's Silver Fox' is a touching historical novel of identity-seeking, memory, love, and entanglement, and for all its tragedy, it holds many happy reading moments." - ORF

"'My Mother's Silver Fox' [is] an impressive portrait of people who are repeatedly pushed to the brink of despair - yet never stop hoping for relief." - Die Presse Spectrum

"We are dealing [...] with a virtuosity of storytelling that is unparalleled, setting out on the trail of the best-kept secret that every human being, as long as he or she is sane, unquestionably possesses: the imagination."- Wiener Zeitung

About the author
Alois Hotschnig, born in Carinthia in 1959, lives as a freelance author in Innsbruck. In 1992 he was awarded the Prize of the Province of Carinthia at the Ingeborg Bachmann Competition in Klagenfurt, in the same year his novel "Leonardo's Hands" was published, for which he received the Anna Seghers Prize. In 2000 his second novel "Ludwig's Room" was published. In 2002 he was awarded the Italo Svevo Prize. In addition to his novels, he has written several collections of short stories, most recently "Running Away is Easier While Sitting Down" (2009). He was awarded the Erich Fried Prize for "Maybe This Time" and the Gert Jonke Prize for his narrative work. The books have been translated into numerous languages. Alois Hotschnig also writes plays and radio plays. 

For further information please feel free to contact:
Aleksandra Erakovic 
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Verlag Kiepenheuer & Witsch GmbH & Co. KG 
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50667 Köln  
Telefon: +49 (0) 221- 37685-56 
Telefax: +49 (0) 221- 37 685-88  
[email protected] 

Website: www.kiwi-verlag.de