All These Petty Miracles
Literary Fiction, Fiction
'Love is a soft fabric, but it isn’t a stretchy concept.'
Zeno lives with his mother Leda in an old, abandoned saltworks, surrounded by a river and salt marshes. He knows what to do here. He is acquainted with the bleak, hot summers and the river mists of the clammy winters. However, above all, he knows the birds – buzzards, golden eagles, falcons, northern goshawks, Eurasian eagle-owls, and owls – that they rent out in the saltworks to sensation-hungry day-trippers. But one day, his mother vanishes. And as if miraculously summoned, other people find their way to Zeno in the saltworks – people from the big city who long for the last remnants of raw nature, who no longer perceive any meaning in their working world.
A dazzling, poetic novel about the destructive but all-too-human longing for nature, the lifesaving quality of the relationships we choose to have, and the hope that rests in the tides.
- An urgently critical, literary exploration of the climate crisis
- The extraordinary story of a lifesaving friendship
- A poetic fable about THE topic of our time: people’s interaction with nature
'‘All These Petty Miracles’ is a post-decadent statement about new open spaces. Its skilful combination of nature writing, climate fiction and social politics creates a poetic Stoicism. With its calming, non-judgmental observational style, this story allows its messianically intelligent child to progress towards a melancholy hope. Only after the last tree has been cut down, only after the last river has been poisoned, only after the last fish has been caught, humanity will not only realise that money cannot be eaten – they may also look back at Leona Stahlmann’s ‘All These Petty Miracles’ to discover a catechism for a new era.'
Deutschlandfunk
Leona Stahlmann, born in 1988, lives in Hamburg and works as an author, journalist and event organizer. In 2017, she won the Hamburg Advancement Award for Literature, and the following year, she was a fellow at the Novel Workshop of the Brecht House Literature Forum in Berlin, and won the first Wortmeldung Advancement Prize. Her debut novel 'Der Defekt' ('The Defect') was released in 2020 and received major critical acclaim. It was also awarded the Mark State Grant and was included on the shortlist for the 2021 Text & Sprache Literature Prize. Among other awards, she received the German Literary Fund Work Grant for 'All These Petty Miracles'.
.jpg "Leona Stahlmann")
'Love is a soft fabric, but it isn’t a stretchy concept.'
Zeno lives with his mother Leda in an old, abandoned saltworks, surrounded by a river and salt marshes. He knows what to do here. He is acquainted with the bleak, hot summers and the river mists of the clammy winters. However, above all, he knows the birds – buzzards, golden eagles, falcons, northern goshawks, Eurasian eagle-owls, and owls – that they rent out in the saltworks to sensation-hungry day-trippers. But one day, his mother vanishes. And as if miraculously summoned, other people find their way to Zeno in the saltworks – people from the big city who long for the last remnants of raw nature, who no longer perceive any meaning in their working world.
A dazzling, poetic novel about the destructive but all-too-human longing for nature, the lifesaving quality of the relationships we choose to have, and the hope that rests in the tides.
- An urgently critical, literary exploration of the climate crisis
- The extraordinary story of a lifesaving friendship
- A poetic fable about THE topic of our time: people’s interaction with nature
'‘All These Petty Miracles’ is a post-decadent statement about new open spaces. Its skilful combination of nature writing, climate fiction and social politics creates a poetic Stoicism. With its calming, non-judgmental observational style, this story allows its messianically intelligent child to progress towards a melancholy hope. Only after the last tree has been cut down, only after the last river has been poisoned, only after the last fish has been caught, humanity will not only realise that money cannot be eaten – they may also look back at Leona Stahlmann’s ‘All These Petty Miracles’ to discover a catechism for a new era.'
Deutschlandfunk