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Hausfrau

Hausfrau

Author(s): Jill Alexander Essbaum

Location(s): Zurich

Genre(s): Fiction

Era(s): Modern

Location

Content

Anna was a good wife, mostly . . .

Anna Benz lives in comfort and affluence with her husband and three young children in Dietlikon, a picture-perfect suburb of Zurich. Anna, an American expat, has chosen this life far from home; but, despite its tranquility and order, inside she is falling apart.

Feeling adrift and unable to connect with her husband or his family; with the fellow expatriates who try to befriend her; or even, increasingly, her own thoughts and emotions, Anna attempts to assert her agency in the only way that makes sense to her: by engaging in short-lived but intense sexual affairs.

But adultery, too, has its own morality, and when Anna finds herself crossing a line, she will set off a terrible chain of events that ends in unspeakable tragedy. As her life crashes down around her, Anna must then discover where one must go when there is no going back . . .

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Anna is detached, she struggles, she is in a steamed up glass bubble. How can she liberate herself, a foreigner in Switzerland, her domestic ennui is draining her – will casual sex be the...

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