The exceptional debut novel from prize-winning American poet, Jill Alexander Essbaum.
"Haunting . . . Beautifully written, the ennui of its Anna Karenina-esque heroine's deceptively perfect life as a Swiss housewife seeps from every page" Best Books of 2015, Harper's Bazaar
Anna Benz, an American in her late-thirties, lives with her Swiss husband, Bruno - a banker - and their three young children, in a postcard-perfect suburb of Zürich.
Though she leads a comfortable life, she is falling apart inside. Adrift and increasingly unable to connect with Bruno, or even her own feelings, Anna tries to rouse herself with new experiences: German language classes, Jungian analysis, and a series of sexual affairs she enters with an ease that surprises her.
But she soon finds that she can't easily extract herself from these relationships. Having crossed a moral threshold, Anna will discover where a woman goes when there is no going back.
PRAISE FOR HAUSFRAU
"The book that will have everyone talking" Cosmopolitan
"It is that impossible thing: a page-turner about depression." Observer
"Haunting . . . Beautifully written, the ennui of its Anna Karenina-esque heroine's deceptively perfect life as a Swiss housewife seeps from every page" Harper's Bazaar, Best Books of 2015
"Hausfrau may be the Fifty Shades of literary fiction . . . This debut brilliantly chronicles a woman's
life falling apart . . ." The Times