Because of him

"So, as literature should be. What del Buono creates is art."

• Michael Maar

Zora del Buono was eight months old when her father died in a car accident in 1963. The deceased father became the significant void in the family. Mother and daughter hardly spoke about him. Whenever the mother mentioned him, the daughter would abruptly end the conversation with a pounding heart. She could not bear her mother's pain. Now, at sixty, she wonders: What has become of the then 28-year-old E.T. who caused the accident? How has he lived the last sixty years with this guilt?

"Because of him" is the novel of a search: The narrator sets out to find E.T. to confront him with her family's story. Her quest leads her into dark, abyssal places where she finds answers that raise new questions. What does it mean for her that she suddenly knows more about him, the man who killed her father, than about her father himself? And how can one heal when a void will always remain?

How can someone who is absent still shape a life? The premature accidental death of a father – and what it has meant for the daughter's life. The new book by Zora del Buono following the bestseller "Die Marschallin." Contemporary history told as a family story. A novel of research: meticulously detailed, cleverly composed, as precise as it is poetic. For readers of Monika Helfer, Annie Ernaux, and Tove Ditlevsen.

"A brilliant narrative architect."

• Julia Stephan, Schweiz am Wochenende.