La Maison: Inside a Berlin Brothel: A Literary Novel of Sex Work, Identity, and Survival

· Bedford Square Publishers
Ebook
320
Pages
Tools
Eligible

About this ebook

In this bold and intimate semi-autobiographical novel, La Maison, Emma Becker transports the reader behind the closed doors of a Berlin brothel, where she worked for two years not only to earn a living, but to immerse herself in a world she wanted to understand – and to write about with unflinching honesty. What emerges is a deeply personal, unsentimental, and often surprising account of life inside the brothel, where Becker explores not just the physical aspects of sex work, but the emotional, psychological, and social complexities that shape it.

With frankness and literary insight, she recounts her encounters with clients, her growing self-awareness, and, most poignantly, the friendships and solidarity she finds among the other women who work there. Far from reducing sex work to cliché or voyeurism, Becker gives space to the quiet routines, shared laughter, private pain, and hard-won dignity of a profession often misunderstood and rarely written about from the inside.

Part memoir, part sociological study, and wholly literary, La Maison challenges preconceptions about sex, agency, and femininity, offering a provocative and compassionate exploration of what it means to inhabit multiple identities—as worker, writer, woman, and witness.

In this bold and intimate semi-autobiographical novel, La Maison, Emma Becker transports the reader behind the closed doors of a Berlin brothel, where she worked for two years not only to earn a living, but to immerse herself in a world she wanted to understand – and to write about with unflinchi...

Discover more

About the author

​Emma Becker gained recognition with her debut novel Monsieur (2011), followed by Alice (2015). In 2013, she moved to Berlin, where she worked in a brothel for two years to research her semi-autobiographical novel La Maison (2019), which won the Prix France Culture-Télérama. After several years in Berlin, she relocated to the south of France in 2021, where she continues to write.

​Emma Becker gained recognition with her debut novel Monsieur (2011), followed by Alice (2015). In 2013, she moved to Berlin, where she worked in a brothel for two years to research her semi-autobiographical novel La Maison (2019), which won the Prix France Culture-Télérama. After several years i...

Rate this ebook

Tell us what you think.

Reading information

Smartphones and tablets
Install the Google Play Books app for Android and iPad/iPhone. It syncs automatically with your account and allows you to read online or offline wherever you are.
Laptops and computers
You can listen to audiobooks purchased on Google Play using your computer's web browser.
eReaders and other devices
To read on e-ink devices like Kobo eReaders, you'll need to download a file and transfer it to your device. Follow the detailed Help Center instructions to transfer the files to supported eReaders.