And Take What Comes By Ludwig Laher

Without false sentimentality and with hard-hitting realism Ludwig Laher tells the story of a young woman from an East Slovakian Romany family.
From her childhood onwards Monika knows that she will have to rely completely on her own resources. This admittedly has nothing to do with a strong sense of direction – despite having a strong personality, she lacks education and the support to be able to find her way in the world. The way she develops is governed by struggle, being on the run, and fear. Working as a prostitute on the street and in clubs near the Czech Republic's border with Germany and Austria, she seems destined to be exploited, conned and humiliated.
Because he feels affection and likes a challenge, a customer offers this forlorn, extremely distrustful woman a new prospect. In the process two things become clear, on the one hand how much self-discipline she is able to muster to make use of this opportunity, but on the other hand that nothing can compensate for the sort of childhood and youth she has had.
Ludwig Laher concentrates in his novel on the way this woman develops, which he tells in a precise and gripping manner. Nevertheless the book succeeds in providing a razor-sharp account of social conditions right in the middle of Europe. It is far from being a moralizing attack, but also far from a bleak incantation that the main thing is to strengthen the individual's own sense of responsibility, while at the same time more and more people find the ground crumbling under them.
Ludwig Laher, born in 1955 in Linz, lives and works as a free-lance writer in St. Pantaleon (Upper Austria). He writes prose, poetry, essays, radio plays, film books and translations, including academic studies.