Madeleine – this is the pastry with the relief of a shell, which consists of flour, powdered sugar, egg, baking soda, lemon zest and rum. It is one of those baked goods that can comfort. It never disappoints, Magdalena knows. Madeleine is “what calls for a soft woman’s name”. Quite the opposite of Magdalena: the name is “exhausting and hard, with whole landslides and dung heaps attached to it, and the smell of the butcher’s daughter that Magdalena is”.

Magdalena shimmies through everyday life more badly than well: during the day she works in a Zurich pastry shop, observes people passing by and thinks about suicide. Loss and guilt torment the bulimic and ex-prostitute. Her father is ill with cancer. Her only boyfriend breaks up with her because he can no longer watch her self-destruct. And her new lover, as a self-proclaimed great writer, is busy only with himself. Magdalena’s longing for security becomes greater and greater, until one Sunday she meets someone.

Romana Ganzoni, born in 1967 in Scuol, studied history and German language and literature and taught for a long time at secondary schools in Zurich. In 2013 she published her first essay in the literary magazine “SALZ”, followed by novels, short stories and poems as well as columns for newspapers. “Magdalena’s Sin” (Telegrams) is her current novel.

Moderation: Vera Kaiser