Axolotl Roadkill

Translated from the original German by Katy Derbyshire

2014 Longlist

An extraordinary and controversial bestseller in Germany from a teenage literary prodigy – a cynical Catcher in the Rye of the noughties.

‘Horrible lives are a godsend,’ writes 16-year-old Mifti in her diary. Since the death of her mother, she has been living in Berlin in an increasingly dire state of disarray. Diagnosed as a ‘pseudo stress-debilitated’ problem child, she becomes enmeshed in the Berlin party scene, surviving her so called life through a haze of sex, drugs and club culture.
What sets Mifti apart is her hypersensitivity and her open, questioning curiosity about an older generation that doesn’t seem to be able to care for its children. Torn between genius and madness, she delves into the language of adults, their conventions and toys with what she calls, ‘the general decay of their worlds, where the pursuit of prosperity has led to neglect’.

(From Publisher)

About the Author

Helene Hegemann was born in 1992 and lives in Berlin. Axolotl Roadkill  is her first novel.

Librarian’s Comments

Helene Hegemann’s forceful debut about a young angry woman in Berlin; intelligent, well educated, frustrated, neglected, lost. Driven to distraction, dissociative, with lots of drugs, sex, hallucinating scenes, she experiences a surreal city. This novel has its very own sound.