An atmospheric evocation of modern Berlin, a vivid portrait of youth under pressure, and a moving story about learning to love, this new novel from the author of Broken Glass Park is an irreverent look at the sometimes difficult work of self-acceptance.

Badly disfigured as a result of an encounter with a dog, seventeen-year-old Marek begins attending a support group for young people with physical disabilities, which he dubs “the cripple group,” led by an eccentric older man known only as The Guru. Marek is dismissive of the other members of the support group, seeing little connection between their misfortunes and his own. The one exception to this is Janne, the beautiful wheelchair-bound girl with whom he has fallen in love.
When a family crisis forces Marek to face his demons, with or without the group, he finds himself in dire need of support. But the distance he has put between himself and The Guru’s misshapen acolytes may well be too great to bridge.

Just Call Me Superhero is destined to consolidate Alina Bronsky’s reputation as one of her generation’s most compelling and stylish young authors.

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)

• Apr 14 2015
  World Literature Today: "Bronsky depicts Marek successfully en route to maturity as he has some epiphanies about others, and thus himself, and she does this by telling a basically warmhearted story in a wickedly funny way."
  
• Mar 27 2015
  "It's in Marek's quiet, thoughtful moments that the real novel emerges: a darkly humorous look at how we can make life better for those around us."
  — San Francisco Book Review
• Oct 27 2014
  Shelf Awareness: "Bronsky is at her best."
  
• Oct 4 2014
  Bookpage: "A painful, tender, very funny bildungsroman void of sentimentality."
  
• Aug 11 2014
  Library Journal: "Just Call Me Superhero named as one of 25 Key Indie Fiction Titles of 2014."