On Getting Up
A century and a life - transformed into literature
As Helga Schubert’s mother explains to her daughter, she has accomplished three acts of heroism in her lifetime: refusing to abort her daughter, taking her along when fleeing from enemy troops during World War II, and not shooting Helga before the Russians invaded.
In brief episodes and crisp, emotional words, Helga Schubert tells the story of a century of German history - her own history, in an account that seamlessly combines fiction and truth. For over ten years, she was watched by the Stasi. She was almost fifty years old by the time she could vote in her first free election. However, it wasn’t until after her mother’s death that she could find reconciliation, both with her mother, with a life filled with resistance, and with herself.
- From the winner of the Ingeborg Bachman Award 2020
- SPIEGEL bestseller
- New Books in German
Helga Schubert, born in 1940 in Berlin, was a psychotherapist and writer in the GDR. She had withdrawn from public literary life until she won the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize in 2020 with her story ‘On Getting Up’. The eponymous volume of short stories was published by dtv in 2021 and was nominated for the Leipzig Book Fair Prize. ‘This Day. A Book of Hours on Love’ was published in 2023, and in 2024, Helga Schubert was awarded the German Federal Cross of Merit.
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