Blue-Haired Rebel Against a Predestined Life

Schellfisch grows up along the coast. In winter, two thousand people live in the sleepy town, and in the summer a few hundred more vacationers join them. For Schellfisch, after school there are only two paths: to toil in the steelworks or to rot away in the distribution center.

Schellfisch can be read as a nonbinary figure: The Libris Literature Prize jury explicitly describes the main character as neither man nor woman. The complete German publisher description also touches the pronoun issue: “When you are invisible to others, you can look like you want, and you don’t need pronouns.” At the same time, Schellfisch longs to be seen and to break free from this life.

Growing up in a family with no prospects

With Duncan, who smuggles the medications of the deceased out of a hospice, Céline, who still wears a fur coat even in midsummer, and Jeremy, who has had their incisors sharpened to points, Schellfisch forms a tight-knit crew. Until Schellfisch goes too far one day.

Yet, even without the friends and with a fresh scar on their face, Capitulation on Command does not enter Schellfisch’s mind as a possibility. Instead, the search for a new place in the world begins. Raised in a family without prospects, Schellfisch—sporting blue hair and an unbound will—resists a life dictated from above.

“Capitulation on Command” (Amazon affiliate link) stood on the Libris short list for the literary prize. It is Nadia de Vries’s first novel to appear in German, translated by Lisa Mensing.

The author, born in 1991 in the Netherlands, is a writer, a poet, and a cultural scientist. The daily newspaper NRC Handelsblad named her in 2020 as one of the ten literary talents of the new decade. Her debut novel appeared in 2022. De Vries writes regularly for Het Parool, De Witte Raaf, and Metropolis M, and is editor of the literary magazine nY. (dd/pm)