Beside Myself is the disturbing and exhilarating story of a family across four generations.
At its heart is one woman’s search for her twin brother. When Anton goes missing, and the only clue is a postcard sent from Istanbul, Alissa leaves her life in Berlin to find him. Without her twin, the sharer of her memories and the mirror of her own self, Ali is lost.
In a city steeped in political and social changes, where you can buy gender-changing drugs on the street, Ali’s search—for her missing brother, for her identity—will take her on a journey for connection and belonging.
Beside Myself is a brilliant literary debut about belonging, about family and love, and about the enigmatic nature of identity.
Sasha Marianna Salzmann is a playwright, essayist, curator, and writer in residence of the Maxim Gorki Theater in Berlin. She is the cofounder of the culture magazine freitext and was the artistic director of Studio Я. Her work has been translated, shown, and bestowed awards in more than twenty countries. Beside Myself is her first novel, and was short-listed for the 2017 German Book Prize.
Imogen Taylor was born in London in 1978 and has lived in Berlin since 2001. She is the translator of Sascha Arango, Dirk Kurbjuweit, and Melanie Raabe, among others. Her translation of Sasha Marianna Salzmann’s Beside Myself was short-listed for the 2021 Helen & Kurt Wolff Translator’s Prize and the 2020 Schlegel-Tieck Prize.