17-year-old Sascha Naimann lives in Berlin's Russian ghetto with her two younger siblings and, until recently, her mother. She is precocious, independent, street-wise, and, since her stepfather murdered her mother several months ago, an orphan. Unlike most of her companions, she doesn't dream of escaping from the tough housing project where they live. Sascha's dreams are different: she longs to write a novel about her beautiful but nave mother and kill her stepfather. Sacha's story, candid and self confident, relates her struggle.

Alina Bronsky
Alina Bronsky is the author of Broken Glass Park, The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine, named a Publishers Weekly’s Best Book of the Year, Just Call Me Superhero and Baba Dunja's Last Love. Born in Yekaterinburg, an industrial town at the foot of the Ural Mountains in central Russia, Bronsky relocated with her family to Berlin when she was thirteen. Author's Web site (in German)

• May 4 2016
  10 Great Novels of Exile and Dislocation: A Reading List
  — Electric Literature