Scientist Nelly Senff is desperate to escape her life in East Berlin. The father of her two children has supposedly committed suicide, and she wants to leave behind the prying eyes of the Stasi.

But the West is not all she hoped for. Nelly and her children are held in Marienfelde, a refugee processing centre and no-mans-land between East and West. There she meets Krystyna, a Polish woman who hopes that medical treatment in the West will save her dying brother; Hans, a troubled actor released from prison in the East; and John, a CIA man monitoring the refugees for possible Stasi spies. All lives cross here, in this gateway to a new life.

Now an award-winning film

Julia Franckwas born in Berlin in 1970. Her novelThe Blind Side of the Heartwon the German Book Prize and sold over a million copies in Germany alone. It was shortlisted for the IndependentForeign Fiction Prize and the Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Literary Prize, and was named one of the best books of the year by theGuardianand US magazineKirkus Reviews.Westis her third novel to be translated into English.

A novel about fresh starts and past lives from the winner of the German Book Prize