Ida doesn’t want to commit herself at any price. When she meets Antoine, she faces questions about her origins.
Ida doesn’t let anyone get close to her that easily. She rather shimmies from one man to another, loose acquaintances are more important to her than deep relationships, committing to someone seems impossible to her. Suddenly, however, she is confronted with her past through her encounter with Antoine and his two daughters Agnes and Leïla. Based on her relationship with them, she begins to search for her origins. She quickly becomes fascinated by the story of her long-dead grandmother Magdalena, who until now has been a blind spot for her. Ida circles her grandmother’s life story like a satellite, linking her grandmother’s life to her own, her memories to a strangers’ memories. Did Magdalena denounce her own sister Anna for having an affair with a French prisoner of war in 1941? During Ida’s investigations, 300 pages of letters turn up – all love letters from a certain Clement, addressed to Magdalena... The denunciator apparently had an affair with a prisoner of war herself.
Between searching and finding, dream and reality, telling and remembering, Luise Maiers novel revolves around questions of her own origins, about the connections between past and present.
