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Authors & Books
Marla Gascer
Marla Gascer is a cultural journalist, theatre scholar, mother, educator, media consultant and author of numerous articles, features, documentaries, book contributions and publications on film and theatre topics.—Reading is a dance for two.
»The earth revolves around itself« is Marla Gascer's debut novel, which we at the publishing house are very pleased about.
Die Erde dreht sich um sich selbst
The Earth Rotates But Around Itself – A Novel
- Hardcover
- 304 pages
978-3-86638-506-1
In a near, alas uncertain future, doctor Vanessa Fulco has reason to suspect that several of her clinic patients are falling prey to a new type of illness that is accompanied by a loss of control over their limbs and a strange mental fixation that is beginning to spread like a pandemic.
The man's heartbeat is regular with a reduced pulse. His head continues to move mechanically from left to right. As if he were fundamentally objecting. A disagreement with everything. She can sympathise with that. The doctor places a hand on his forearm, which calms under her touch, and tilts her head down towards the patient. He has opened his eyes. The watery blue iris moves back and forth as evenly as if he were reading. He is talking, but his voice is weak and his tongue is heavy. Doctor Fulco leans down a little lower.
It is not the loss of control in her patients or the stiffening of their limbs that worries Doctor Fulco as she tries to understand the clinical picture on the one hand and fights against the speculation that is shooting up from the ground and above all from the media on the other: it is the hardening IN the minds against which there seems to be no cure.
The novel travels a long way from the narrated symptoms until the first insights emerge on how to live well in this world:
»We wanted to gather the good. What you wanted to say was that when the exception seems to be the rule in our world, we have learnt to focus on something else. That we may have developed antennae or abilities that, if there is no security outside, must lie within ourselves. At the very least, we have learned to live with the unpredictable [...] Even the seasons are no longer something you can rely on, with their beautiful changes of spring, summer, autumn and winter.«
»That’s true. But perhaps it has always been a delusion to believe that anything to do with life could be calculated.«
(Many thanks to Andreas Reeg, Darmstadt, for the author's photo).
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)
