Upheaval

Four women from four generations, one communal apartment, and the end of an era

This is a story of change: in the vast Siberian expanse, one thousand versts east of Moscow, a grandmother, mother, daughter, and granddaughter live together in one room of a communal apartment, beneath crumbling plaster that hearkens back to bygone days. It is March 11, 1985, and the world is on a historical turning-point that no one can yet anticipate. The engineer next door continues to sort his life into little boxes; Varvara helps deliver a baby; Maria dreams of love; and Janka sings in the kitchen at night.

UPHEAVAL is a powerful novel about four lives on a turning-point, a lost world whose tremors we can still feel today, and the absurdity of life and its great question: “How should we live?”

In this incisive chronicle of our time, Katerina Poladjan shows once again that German literature is, above all, European literature. Music of the Future is a timeless novel replete with tender humor that turns to the age-old, yet ever-pressing question of how we should live.

VIDEO: Sophie Duvernoy reads for Translators Aloud

“UPHEAVAL is the quintessence of a novel: as powerful and beautiful and clear as thirty novels.” — Monika Rinck

"Katerina Poladjan has written one of the very great contemporary German novels, which is read differently now in times of war than it was in times of peace." — Denis Scheck

“Strong dialogues, moving portraits. Katerina Poladjan has mastered the art of elision, and yet her novels are all atmosphere.” — Meike Feßmann on HERE ARE LIONS