Leaving Berlin

*Shortlisted for two 2011 Saskatchewan Book Awards: Fiction and City of Regina

Britt Holmström’s stories contain all-too-human portraits meticulously rendered with enough mischief and humour to keep the reader rapidly turning the pages. With an acutely clear eye she describes fateful events through narrators that are utterly authentic and intimate. Her style is, as ever, incredibly lucid, her narrative powers effortless with a generous warmth of vision, her tone oscillating between gentle nihilism and practical optimism. Each tale bristles with fierceness.

At the heart of each story is Holmström’s remarkable ability to reveal painful truths visible only when we turn a critical eye upon ourselves. These are stories of hard-fought revelation where picaresque meets romance in tales of mismatched couples, doomed encounters, and “If only…” moments in Canada and abroad.