Six Questions to… the Author Elina Penner

I have been working for a long time as an author for magazines like Hauptstadtmutti, 11 Freunde, or Vice. Writing a novel has always been a small, secret dream of mine. However, I never actively pursued it. Until I met my agent for lunch in 2018 and asked her what one needs to do to write a book. She asked me an interesting counter-question: "Elina, do you want to write a book?" It was only when I clearly answered this question with "yes" that it moved forward. And it went quite traditionally with an idea pitch. We exchanged concepts back and forth for several years. On January 2, 2020, I started with "Nachtbeeren."

First, there were some research tasks, then every morning I went to a co-working space in Minden. My husband was on parental leave at the time – and I could focus on my book. While writing itself, I was very focused. Sometimes I can write in a real frenzy.

"Nachtbeeren" is a Russian-German family novel. Specifically, it deals with a Mennonite family that meets over a weekend. The story is absurd and pointed. It revolves around these special dynamics that can sometimes be particularly dramatic in migrant families. As a reader, you definitely have to engage with it, there is a lot of black humor.

This very story actually only came about while writing. Before that, I had many other ideas in my head, even if the setting was always similar: It was about brothers, it was about resettlers, it was about Minden.

There are significant generational differences. Older people often find the book too cynical and exaggerated. Younger people, on the other hand, feel understood. The two novel characters Nelli and Eugen are, for example, typical cliché Millennials. They are part of the 'brought-along' generation; they were not asked if they wanted to emigrate to Germany. Many German Russians under 40 can identify with this because they have had similar experiences. They feel that for the first time, it is about 'their' history, and through the book, they experience a public representation that they do not know otherwise.