Belle Santos

Anna Gmeyner’s «Automatenbüfett» satirises all the «important» people of a small town and the larger world in microcosm. This elite group of men gathers daily in Mrs Adam’s automated buffet, a «restaurant» where food and drink may only be available at the push of a button, but one can nevertheless argue splendidly about politics. However, when the idea of factory farming fish is proposed, all these opponents suddenly start pulling in the same direction.

Jovana Reisinger’s novel follows nine women from early spring to the summer of an unspecified year not far from the present. All of them live in or around Munich and they are all named after women’s magazines. They live and fail representatively, each of them alone and yet collectively, by the images and ideals of what it means to be a woman.