Ich ertrinke in einem fliehenden See

‘May your life lurch, sometimes to the left, sometimes to the right’, reads an early passage in Anna Melikova’s novel Ich ertrinke in einem fliehenden See, alluding to lines by Joseph Brodsky. This story of a first, obsessive love is about this very vacillation, making mistakes and searching for the right path in life; about self-discovery and self-assertion and gradual liberation from co-dependency, against the backdrop of Russia’s annexation of Crimea. At the end of a fifteen-year writing process in three languages, reflecting the protagonist’s lengthy shift away from her native Russian towards Ukrainian and German, Melikova has managed to combine the contradictions of lyrical pathos (reminiscent of Tsvetaeva) and poststructuralist scepticism about language as a source of strength and cleverly reflects on its own autofictionality. Whether for tenderness, ‘skyscraper words’, or snotty curses, Christiane Pöhlmann’s translation always finds the right timbres and nuances.
—Hannes Langendörfer

Anna Melikova, born in Ukraine in 1984 and raised in Crimea, is a writer and screenwriter. After studying German language and literature in Kyiv, she worked as a film curator and critic in Moscow. She has lived in Berlin since 2017. She wrote the screenplay for the film Grand Jeté (2022). Her prose works have appeared in various magazines and anthologies. In 2022, she was a fellow of the LCB.

Christiane Pöhlmann, born in 1968, studied Slavic, German, history, and translation in Berlin and Moscow. She translates from Russian and Italian and writes as a literary critic for publications including taz and FAZ.