Blurb Inga Machel's debut Auf den Gleisen was nominated for the Leipzig Book Fair Prize in 2024 and was on the SWR best list. In her new novel, she uses three very different lives to tell the story of what unites us humans: the survival instinct. A girl somewhere in Germany, an outlaw in Aotearoa New Zealand, a woman on US death row - three lives on the fringes: childhood, society, existence. The girl, convinced that she is no longer a child, spends a summer full of contradictions in the town where she has to live. Her only friend is a knife. The aging outlaw embarks on a road trip with a corpse and a pile of drugs in his luggage, which takes him to the limits of freedom. The woman sentenced to death waits in her cell for execution while her last hours of life are meticulously recorded by a guard. Inga Machel looks at her stumbling characters with empathy and tenderness, and her language develops a pull that one cannot escape.