Like a sudden arrival from nowhere, the eighteen-year-old Nim steps into the life of the older Jules. In the nightclub run by Jules’ ex-husband Leon, she soon takes over the bar and moves through daily life with a self-assurance that makes her appear far more mature than her peers. Against all warnings, Nim begins a secret relationship with Leon — with consequences that run deep: she becomes pregnant.
While Nim recoils at the thought of becoming a mother, Jules experiences a long-suppressed longing for her own child reignite. From the web of relationships unfolds an emotionally dense drama that probes closeness, dependence, and the fragile balance between desire and self-determination.
Questions of Desire, Responsibility, and Social Expectations
With this material, Saba Sams, born in 1996 in Brighton, for the first time enters the realm of long-form fiction. The author has for several years now been regarded as one of the most exciting voices in young British literature. In 2023 she was named by the literary magazine “Granta” to the prestigious “Best of Young British Novelists,” an honor awarded only once every ten years. Her widely acclaimed short-story collection “Send Nudes” earned her, among other prizes, the BBC National Short Story Award and the Edge Hill Short Story Prize, and drew broad recognition in the international press. The Guardian counted the volume among the literary highlights of its year of release. With “Wir sind das Leben” Sams now transfers her precise observational gaze and keen sense for emotional depths to a novel, weaving a multilayered portrait of female relationships in which questions of desire, responsibility, and societal expectations are inextricably interwoven. The novel is now available in German translation by Yvonne Eglinger at Munich-based Piper Verlag as a hardcover for 22 euros and as an e-book for 18.99 euros (Amazon Affiliate Link). A sample excerpt can be found on the publisher’s page. (dd/pm)
