Fleeing the Fog

Florina Badel’s novel Nebelflüchtige (The Fleeing Fog) is one of the most acclaimed debut novels of recent years. Aita leaves her hometown in Lower Engadine after graduating from high school and starts a new life in Vienna, the “capital of the Inn,” as Johannes calls it.

 

The Inn is the wider of the two Passau rivers, where it joins the Danube. Aita only returns to her village after her mother’s sudden death, but it is no longer the home of her childhood. Old Engadine houses are being sold off one by one to the highest bidder. The luxury property market is booming, and Aita’s siblings are eager to profit from it. Aita can only watch helplessly as her childhood friend Louis, who has taken over the village shop, desperately searches for strategies to resist the commercial exploitation of nature and local traditions.

Nebelflüchtige is a multifaceted, poetic, and compelling novel that explores the clash of contemporary worlds.