A bittersweet and hilarious novel about a marriage whose decades-old routine is suddenly upended

“Thrilling and moving in equal measure.”
—Berliner Zeitung

Praise for My Grandmother’s Braid:

“Alina Bronsky brilliantly keeps the mood funny and uplifting throughout with quirky characters and irreverent humour.”
—Apple Books, Book of the Month

 “Funny, maddening, and surprisingly sentimental and compassionate.”
—Barbara Halla, Asymptote

Walter Schmidt has lived his whole life within the narrow, “comfortable” confines of traditional gender roles: he has made it to retirement without learning how to fry an egg or use a vacuum cleaner. After all, he could always count on his wife, Barbara. But when one morning she can’t get up from bed anymore, everything changes.

With biting humour and great warmth, Alina Bronsky writes about how Walter, nearing the end of his life, is suddenly forced to reinvent himself as a caregiver and house-husband, and become the caring partner he never was in all his years with Barbara. Little by little, Walter’s rough facade begins to crumble—and with it his old certainties about his life and family.

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)