Books
ROSE was bored in 2009 when her three children were at school, but the irregular Swiss timetable meant she couldn't move far from the house. The children flew in and out like bees in a hive.
Sitting at the kitchen table, waiting, she remembered her trip on a cargo ship to Australia in 1988. And when Juanes appeared on the kitchen counter and wouldn't budge, Rose's journey as a novelist and biographer began.
Book number eight was published in German this year. All the books are gradually being translated into English, Spanish and French.
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A famous department store in Germany and the correspondence between a Jewish merchant and his non-Jewish advisor during the Holocaust is Rose's current biography project.
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All books in German
available in bookstores
TRUDE Volume I Bernstein Saga Trude grows up as the seventh child in a meagre male household in Estonia. As a young woman, she blossoms at the side of her lover Valentin. They start a family and move to Leningrad. Shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War, the family seizes the opportunity and emigrates to Darwin, where the father finds a job as an engineer in a shipyard. Trude survived the Japanese bombing raid on Darwin in February 1942 thanks to her Aboriginal friend Bakana. She spends the war years with her children in the shelter of the outback. After the end of the war, Trude returns to normality by working and accompanying her adolescent children. An amber that Trude's mother once found on a Baltic Sea beach miraculously finds its way to Trude and is passed on from mother to daughter as a symbolic women's stone. Trude's children Sergej, Philipp and Anne grow up and start their own families. A particularly strong bond develops between her granddaughter Meilin and Trude. After Cyclone Tracy razes Darwin to the ground for a second time in 1974, Trude moves to Brisbane to live with Anne. In the last phase of her life, she indulges her love of books as the owner of a second-hand bookshop. At the end of her life, Trude describes herself as an ineradicable root. And rightly so! She never allowed herself to be bent and always retained her stubbornness. Anne's husband Malcolm just rolled his eyes at his crotchety mother-in-law. TRUDE | German Band I der Bernstein Saga 1908-1998 Roman Hardcover, 480 Seiten, 2017 ISBN 978-3-931560-54-6 Sheema Medien Verlag www.sheema-verlag.de
AMBER Volume II Bernstein Saga Amber owes her name to her red hair and the amber that her mother Meilin wore when she was born. This family stone was passed down from mother to daughter. The parents, the Swiss Walter and the Australian Meilin, move to Switzerland with the baby to test the family thing. The reactor accident in Chernobyl, Meilin's abysses, her prudent grandmother Nelly and distant relatives Down Under characterise Amber's early childhood. At the age of twelve, Amber moves to live with her father in Zurich for good. Urban life, political discussions with her father Walter and teacher Niklaus Hug awaken Amber's interest in global and social contexts. As a sociology student, she acquires background knowledge and is outraged by the nuclear and war lobbies and unjust power relations. She dreams of a global awakening of women for the good of all. With the support of her partner Frederik, she enters politics. After Fukushima, her commitment hits the zeitgeist and she takes off politically. Amber finds new inspiration at a conference on the future in Berlin. But an encounter with a person from her past is her undoing. Through carelessness, she makes the headlines and learns about the dark side of social media. She is met with a wave of hatred. But it is above all her desire for a fundamental reorientation that drives her out of politics. AMBER (German) Volume II of the Bernstein Saga The novel AMBER hits the nerve of the times and tells the story of a Generation Y woman in Central Europe who has to find her way and position herself in a highly complex society. The story interweaves Amber's life with contemporary history, questions of ethics, the why, where from and where to of the global community. The novel AMBER is the second volume of the Amber saga and differs in language and style from the first volume, TRUDE. But in great-granddaughter Amber, Trude's alert spirit shines through unmistakably. AMBER Bernstein Saga Volume II 1986 -2015 Novel Hardcover, 680 pages, 2018 ISBN 978-3-931560-67-6 Sheema Medien Verlag www.sheema-verlag.deTRUDE
MEILIN Volume III Bernstein Saga Grandmother Trude and a dream of a red dress are able to warm the girl through her childhood years. At the age of nineteen, she flees to Europe with the backpacker Gérard. Her odyssey takes her from Morocco via Egypt to France, where she finds a home for a short time in a commune and unintentionally becomes pregnant. For the sake of her daughter Amber, she follows the child's father Walter to Switzerland and realises that motherhood is not her thing. Her mother-in-law Nelly, her sewing machine and beautiful fabrics briefly lift Meilin out of her gloom. Torn between her need for freedom and her love for her daughter, she meanders through life. The turning point comes with a trip to the outback, where she meets the strangest person in her life: herself. German: MEILIN Band III der Bernstein Saga 1961 - 2023 Roman, Hardcover, 672 Seiten, 2022 ISBN 978-3-948177-19-5
SAILOR’S YARN What shall we do with the drunken sailors? Rosi is a somewhat naive but intrepid country girl. In her early 20s, she wants to get as far away as possible from heartache and the confines of her home. A cargo ship voyage to the other side of the world sounds promising. But six weeks on the high seas between Hamburg and Sydney is a long time that needs to be filled. At some point she gets tired of herself and, despite her good intentions, gets involved with a gang of wild sailors. Contrary to Rosi's fears, they turn out to be very decent traveling companions. And Kazimierz succeeds in ensnaring them. On the voyage around Europe and through the Suez Canal, the Polish freighter unloads its cargo in several harbours. Rosi gets to know other countries and customs when she goes ashore. The impressions are incredible, new and fascinating. A gift for the insatiable spirit of the provincial is the retired professor couple Bill and Netty, who sail the oceans in their twilight years and know the answers to many questions. Rosi learns to play the guitar on board and, above all, has plenty of time to think about life between heaven and earth and to come to terms with herself as Sydney draws closer. Years later, the author scrolls through her travel diary and retells the adventure. It is quite possible that her imagination takes on a life of its own and mixes with the true events. Just like a sailor's yarn! SAILOR’s YARN Narrative Paperback New edition 2025 ISBN
ESMERALDA I have found what I was not looking for After six weeks at sea, Rose finally reaches Australia, her promised land, as an astrologer had read in the stars. Everything is new and strange. She takes every job she can get and ends up in bizarre situations. In a hippy village, she is hauled off by cowboys and an American pulls out a surgeon's knife. Rose falls in love with Harry because he has a velvet voice. Unfortunately, he is a Moonie and marries a woman he doesn't know. Rose's seaworthiness is tested on a sailing trip. Rose meets Trude in a library in Brisbane. The woman is sixty years older and takes the young Swiss woman in for a while. Over breakfast coffee, Trude talks about her meagre childhood in Estonia and her migration to Australia before Europe began to burn. At the time, the young Swiss woman could not have known that the gnarled woman from the bookshop would change her life forever. The story Esmeralda symbolises the unfulfilled and the interweaving of Rose's and Trude's stories. Rose is at the beginning and Trude at the end of her life. Both are travellers between worlds. Neither Rose's nor Trude's dreams are fulfilled. Not straight away. But along the way, they make the best of what life throws at them instead. In the story, we learn how Rose met the real Trude, who inspired her to write the Bernstein Saga. ESMERALDA German Autobiografische Erzählung Kartonierter Einband, 356 Seiten, 2018 (2014) ISBN: 978-3-7528-0957-2 BoD - Books on Demand
My child is a unicorn Parallel universes of a mom As a mother, writer, partner and fellow human being, a woman sometimes lives in several galaxies at the same time. The author reflects on intact worlds, new beginnings, being a stranger and belonging, searching and questions of meaning in an increasingly crazy world. She writes about her insights in weekly blogs. Surfing: In the evening, we usually lie down in bed with our children and let the day fade away, one parent with each son. Today it's my turn with the eight-year-old. He tenderly strokes a long strand of my hair and says: ‘Your hair has such beautiful waves. I'd love to surf in it.’ (German) Mein Kind ist ein Einhorn Paralleluniversen des Alltags Kurzgeschichten Kartonierter Einband, 168 Seiten, 2018 ISBN 978-3-7528-4651-5 BoD - Books on Demand
SALUTI WERNI Karajan's plumber Werner Rüegsegger was born in 1939 as the youngest child of a farming family in Gotthelf's Emmental valley. The death of his mother becomes a real ordeal for those left behind. The boy cheats his way through school and finds an apprenticeship as a coppersmith at the Kuhn-Rikon pan factory. He honed his craft at well-known Swiss companies such as Sulzer, the Toni dairy and the Hotel Kulm in St. Moritz and eventually set up his own business. He built juicing and flavouring plants for Unipektin in Europe, Asia, Africa and the USA. Werni escapes two revolutions, experiences apartheid and money laundering, shakes hands with many celebrities and knows where his anchor is: with his family in Switzerland. At Lake Constance, he and his wife Hedi enter the cheese business. In this subsidised business, it's not just the cheese that stinks. Over a hundred dairies in Switzerland and abroad were renovated or newly built under his management. At his new place of residence, he became involved in local politics until Hedi's dementia forced him to cut back. Werni cares for Hedi until her last breath. Werner Rüegsegger's biography is a testimony to the Swiss pioneering spirit, the golden eighties for entrepreneurs, geopolitics and humanity. As an inventor, he was always tinkering with optimisation; as an entrepreneur, he demanded clear lines. But for all his achievements and accomplishments, humanity and love remain the highest values for the self-made man. When Werni tells his stories, your jaw will drop open. Published 2023 in German, The book can be ordered directly from Werner Rüegsegger: w.ruegsegger@bluewin.ch
GOLDEN MOUNTAINS A true story between Orient and Occident Shokhan was born in 1980 as the eldest of five children in the Kurdish-Iraqi city of Sulaimaniya. After the death of her grandfather, her parents travelled hastily to Europe with her siblings, leaving the first-born behind with her grandmother Daya. The girl often looks at the mountain ridge north of the city, which glows golden in the evening light. I wonder where her family lives behind it. Her uncles are fighting with the Peshmerga in the mountains for an autonomous Kurdistan and are becoming a target of the Iraqi regime. After poison gas attacks, Daya flees with Shokhan to neighbouring Iran, where they have to watch out for the morality police, but fortunately find shelter with relatives. With the Gulf Wars, the situation of the Kurds worsens and with it the existential plight of grandmother and granddaughter. One night, the father suddenly appears at the door. Within a few hours, the thirteen-year-old has to decide between a safe life in unknown Austria and the threatening everyday life with her beloved but elderly Daya. In the new world, no one is waiting for Shokhan. The gulf between her and her parents is too great for her to find a new home in her own family. As if the girl didn't already have enough problems with the physical change and the family break-up, she has to deal with a new language, rivalries, a different school system and career choices as a foreigner. No wonder she falls in with bad company and turns to substances to help her escape the harsh reality. Shokhan becomes addicted to heroin and finds herself on the brink of ruin with huge debts. With an iron will, music, spiritual experiences and the help of friends, Shokhan finally finds her way back to life on a long, rocky road. Shokhan's biography is a story of motivation. It shows that staying put is not an option. Shokhan never sees herself as a victim, but seeks and finds sources of strength in all circumstances that she can tap into and that help her to stand up and take small steps towards her life goals. Shokhan knows the Orient and the Occident and sees herself as a bridge builder between cultures. As a woman, a Kurd and a ‘free spirit’, she experiences what it means to defend her highest values in patriarchal structures and to uphold them to this day: Dignity, self-determination and freedom. Shokhan Kamil: www.shocha@gmx.at Goldene Berge (German) Zwischen Krieg und tiefem inneren Frieden Biografie Kartonierter Einband, 242 Seiten, 2024 978-3-7597-7821-5 BoD - Books on Demand