Trag mich

Blurb

Lisa Schewzowa, eighteen, hides the bald patches of her alopecia areata under a woollen hat. In the evenings she counts the hairs from her brush and writes the number in her diary. Before long, below it, she is writing how many hours she has spent waiting for Igor.

In a shop with no name in Stuttgart, the shopkeeper wants no money for the copper-red wig. It is warm, as if someone had just been wearing it, and as she puts it on, something whispers at the very edge of hearing: “Trag mich” (wear me).

With this hair, she turns heads on the station platform. In photos her grey eyes are almost black. “Filter,” she says to Mascha, who has known her since primary school, and Mascha asks, “Which one?”

“It will stay with you until someone sees you,” the shopkeeper said. In her diary that same evening, Lisa wrote: “Then I suppose it will stay for ever.”

An uncanny novel about growing up.

“Trag mich” is part of the “Namenlos” series. Each book tells the story of one object from the shop with no name, an object that grants a wish and takes something in return.

Content note: the book also depicts self-harm, disordered eating, sex under emotional pressure and supernatural body horror. Recommended for ages 16 and up.