Marcel Misset Books

Wetlands--an international sensation with more than a million copies sold worldwide--has been at the center of a heated debate about feminism and sexuality since its publication last spring. Charlotte Roche's controversial debut novel is the story of Helen Memel, an outspoken, sexually precocious eighteen-year-old lying in a hospital bed as she recovers from an operation. To distract herself, she ruminates on her past sexual and physical adventures in increasingly uncomfortable detail. The result is a funny, shocking, and fearlessly intimate manifesto on sex, hygiene, and the compulsion to obliterate the covenant that keeps girls clean, quiet, and nice.

In British-occupied Palestine, 1946, elderly writer Elias Lind doubts reports of his brother Raphael's death in a concentration camp. Unable to search for him himself, Elias persuades a contact in the Jewish resistance to send someone in his place. Lilya, a member of the resistance, is initially reluctant to undertake this mission, feeling it distracts from her goal of helping to establish a new state. As her comrades prepare for a significant operation, she reluctantly accepts her orders and sets off to Europe as part of the American-Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, an aid organization for Jewish survivors. Many of these survivors, having escaped the Nazis, find themselves without family or homes due to British immigration restrictions. If Raphael is alive, he is likely among the refugees in displaced persons camps. Lilya's journey takes her from the secretive corridors of London’s Whitehall to the devastated streets of Munich and Berlin. In Föhrenwald, an overcrowded DP camp, she makes a significant breakthrough in her search. However, she soon realizes she is not alone in her quest; a dangerous adversary is shadowing her every move, intent on finding Raphael first.