review
Kathrin Bach’s haunting debut novel blends tragedy, humour, and social critique into a mosaic of memories and cultural observations. Her experimental yet accessible literary style will appeal to readers of Jenny Offill, Deborah Levy, and Max Porter.
Set in a small West German village from the 1990s to the present, ‘Life Insurance’ tells the story of a woman growing up in a family of insurance agents, surrounded by policies, premiums, and a lingering sense that catastrophe is always just around the corner.
The novel’s nameless narrator explores the psychology of German angst through the themes of familial duty, inherited trauma, and the bureaucratic obsession with risk management. While her parents work tirelessly in their roles as insurance agents – visiting clients in hospital, comforting bereaved families, attending funerals – the narrator internalises a culture of fear. Her childhood is marked not by rebellion or drama, but by panic attacks, fainting spells, and a constant dread of loss. This ever-present fear is rendered with cool precision.
Structured in short, fragmentary chapters, some no longer than a few lines, the novel includes lists of local accidents, descriptions of family routines, and poignant vignettes from village life. Chapters are named after types of insurance – accident, life, liability – each serving as a thematic lens. These fragments build into a rich narrative of trauma and emotional repression.
The novel reaches into the past as the narrator explores the lives of her grandfather, a former WWII POW, her diabetic father, and an uncle with a disability. These personal and familial histories reveal sources of buried trauma, and indirectly shape the narrator’s worldview. By the end, it is clear that storytelling itself, like insurance, is a way of imposing order on chaos. Writing becomes a form of therapy, a structure for containing the uncontainable.
‘Life Insurance’ is a moving, inventive portrait of fear, resilience, and the quiet absurdities of everyday life. Through its combination of cultural specificity and universal themes, the novel offers English-language readers a strikingly fresh take on family, history, and the human desire for safety in an uncertain world.
Find out more: https://www.voland-quist.de/werke/lebensversicherung/
All recommendations from Autumn 2025