Trauer ist das Ding mit Federn

In the organizer's words:

A few days after the sudden death of his mother, a father and his two children sit forlornly in an empty apartment. The first wave of mourners and comforters has gone, the reheated lasagna is slowly getting cold again. How do you carry on when your loved one is no longer there? What to do with all the pain, unanswered questions and self-reproach? All of a sudden, an uninvited visitor bursts into this emotional chaos: a huge, talking crow flutters into the mourning apartment with the intention of nesting there. "I'm not leaving until you don't need me anymore," it snarls at the father. This unforeseen and brazen trickster swirls through the family's pain, picks at the very topics that they would prefer never to address again and prevents any kind of normality from returning. A wild mixture of gloomy Mary Poppins, outrageous grief demon and macabre therapist has the family in a headlock.

British author Max Porter's award-winning novel uniquely captures the various forms of grief, while at the same time being imbued with an astonishingly light-footed and life-affirming consolation. Porter interweaves lyrical elements with prose, reality with imagination and the seriousness of a farewell with absurdly black humor.