The Incident
Fiction, Literary Fiction
Family trees and the roots of Love
A woman is approached by a stranger who claims that they have the same father. This encounter, although brief, unleashes an overwhelming wave of emotions in her. Questions fill her mind: questions about marriage and motherhood, adoption and family secrets – but most of all, questions about truth. In ‘The Incident’, Julia Schoch, one of the most influential voices in contemporary German autofiction, tells of a life transformed from one moment to the next. She captivatingly and cleverly draws the reader into a whirlpool of outrageous events – events which, despite being fictional, remain eerily familiar to us all.
- A beautiful novel narrated with distinctive lightness that reaches great literary depths
- Simultaneously crisp, sensitive, and profound; beautiful with a distinctive lightness
- Julia Schoch is at her best, following in the footsteps of the great female GDR writers
Julia Schoch born in 1974, works as a freelance author and translator of French in Potsdam. She received countless nominations and awards for both her writing and her translation. Her novel ‘Das Vorkommnis’ (‘The Incident’) was awarded with the Schubart-Literaturpreis in 2023. She received the 2022 German Schiller Foundation Award for her literary works.
Family trees and the roots of Love
A woman is approached by a stranger who claims that they have the same father. This encounter, although brief, unleashes an overwhelming wave of emotions in her. Questions fill her mind: questions about marriage and motherhood, adoption and family secrets – but most of all, questions about truth. In ‘The Incident’, Julia Schoch, one of the most influential voices in contemporary German autofiction, tells of a life transformed from one moment to the next. She captivatingly and cleverly draws the reader into a whirlpool of outrageous events – events which, despite being fictional, remain eerily familiar to us all.
- A beautiful novel narrated with distinctive lightness that reaches great literary depths
- Simultaneously crisp, sensitive, and profound; beautiful with a distinctive lightness
- Julia Schoch is at her best, following in the footsteps of the great female GDR writers