Dance by the Canal

Author/Guide: Kerstin Hensel

Why a Booktrail?

1960s: Can Gabriela seize a second chance in the new, united, Germany?

ISBN: 978-1908670380
Genre: novella, Translated Fictioin

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What you need to know before your trail

A tragicomic satire from the heart of East Germany. Gabriela grows up in the East German town of Leibnitz. Her father is a famous surgeon, her mother a respected society hostess. The girl, however, struggles to fulfil their expectations. She shows no talent as a violinist and, worse, she fails to choose the right friends at school. When her father falls out of favour with the communists, Gabriela drops out of school. Eventually she ends up living beneath a canal bridge. Then the Wall falls. Can Gabriela seize a second chance in the new, united, Germany?

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Travel Guide

Travel to East Germany

Leibnitz is a fictional industrial German town, (although there is a town of the same name in Austria). This fictional town is located in the former East Germany and it is an industrial hinterland with factories, pollution, dirt and small houses for its downtrodden workers.

Gabriela is the child in the family the book centers around. She has to cope with a regimented household and regime, an alcoholic father and mother who doesn’t care. Flash forward to the 1990s and the fall of the Berlin Wall – She leaves her home and ends up living under bridges around the town for a while.

Gabriela Von Haßlau has been born into a wealthy family and is given a violin but life is unhappy. The country is under Communist rule and Gabriela is forced to join the Free German Youth. This is a changed country and this girl’s life which has been turned upside down has to try and navigate this landscape as best she can.