Our Anarchistic Hearts

• Nominated for the aspekte-Literaturpreis 2021
• Nominated for Lit.Cologne's Debut Prize 2021
• Deutschlandfunk Prize 2020

“Lisa Krusche’s sinewy and poetic use of language brings everything to life as she mixes registers into a quicksilver flow, and her inexhaustible imagination shows me — and most other writers in German — how fossilized and robotic we have become.”

How are you meant to rebel when everything already seems lost?

Two young women: Charles and Gwen. Charles is dead against moving to the countryside with her post-hippie parents. Luckily, she can count on a newsagent’s, a palm tree and wifi. And Gwen? She lives nearby, her wild, grimy lifestyle an escape from her parents’ prosperity. She steals money from the boys she sleeps with and gives it away. It is high time these two women met.

Lisa Krusche’s debut novel Our Anarchistic Hearts is about the impossible demands of modern life. How are you meant to rebel when everything already seems lost? All that remains is friendship. And this friendship develops its own explosive impetus...

“I think of Sartre. How totally unspecific he was. Hell is not other people. Hell is parents.” From Our Anarchistic Hearts

“Lisa Krusche maps out a fantastic panorama . . . Powerful in its literary technique and highly political.” Klaus Kastberger, Ingeborg Bachmann Prize jury member