Anna Benz, un'americana di quasi quarant'anni, vive con il marito Bruno, un banchiere svizzero, e i loro tre bambini in un sobborgo da cartolina di Zurigo. Ma nonostante la vita agiata e ben inquadrata, dentro sta cadendo a pezzi. Sempre più incapace di relazionarsi con Bruno, emotivamente distante, o addirittura con i propri pensieri e sentimenti, Anna si butta a capofitto in nuove esperienze per risvegliarsi dal torpore: un corso di tedesco, un'analisi junghiana e una serie di avventure sessuali che si concede con una facilità della quale è la prima a stupirsi. Solo nel fuoco della carne, nel pulsare del desiderio nelle vene, Anna trova la conferma di essere ancora viva, ma ben presto deve affrontare le conseguenze delle proprie azioni. Perché anche l'adulterio ha le sue leggi: lasciare un amante ha un costo e tornare a essere una brava moglie non è così semplice. Come mettere d'accordo razionalità e istinto? Come scegliere tra gli obblighi famigliari e i propri desideri più intimi? Come rinunciare a se stessa? Le tensioni e le bugie aumentano, fino a perderne il controllo. Navigando lungo il labile confine tra amore e lussuria, senso di colpa e vergogna, giusto e sbagliato, Anna scoprirà cosa succede quando si arriva al punto in cui non si può più tornare indietro.

Anna Benz, un'americana di quasi quarant'anni, vive con il marito Bruno, un banchiere svizzero, e i loro tre bambini in un sobborgo da cartolina di Zurigo. Ma nonostante la vita agiata e ben inquadrata, dentro sta cadendo a pezzi. Sempre più incapace di relazionarsi con Bruno, emotivamente distante, o addirittura con i propri pensieri e sentimenti, Anna si butta a capofitto in nuove esperienze per risvegliarsi dal torpore: un corso di tedesco, un'analisi junghiana e una serie di avventure sessuali che si concede con una facilità della quale è la prima a stupirsi. Solo nel fuoco della carne, nel pulsare del desiderio nelle vene, Anna trova la conferma di essere ancora viva, ma ben presto deve affrontare le conseguenze delle proprie azioni. Perché anche l'adulterio ha le sue leggi: lasciare un amante ha un costo e tornare a essere una brava moglie non è così semplice. Come mettere d'accordo razionalità e istinto? Come scegliere tra gli obblighi famigliari e i propri desideri più intimi? Come rinunciare a se stessa? Le tensioni e le bugie aumentano, fino a perderne il controllo. Navigando lungo il labile confine tra amore e lussuria, senso di colpa e vergogna, giusto e sbagliato, Anna scoprirà cosa succede quando si arriva al punto in cui non si può più tornare indietro.

HAUSFRAU - ESSBAUM JILL ALEXANDER - Pan

Enduring private misery in spite of a well-appointed life in suburban Zèurich with her distant Swiss banker husband and young children, Anna Benz experiments with unfulfilling hobbies before engaging in a series of surprising sexual affairs.

For readers of Claire Messud and Mary Gaitskill comes a striking debut novel of marriage, fidelity, sex, and morality, featuring a fascinating heroine who struggles to live a life with meaning.

Hausfrau
haus·frau \haus-frau\ n 1: Origin: German.
Housewife, homemaker. 2: A married woman. 3: A novel by jill alexander essbaum

Anna was a good wife, mostly.

Anna Benz, an American in her late thirties, lives with her Swiss husband, Bruno—a banker—and their three young children in a postcard-perfect suburb of Zürich. Though she leads a comfortable, well-appointed life, Anna is falling apart inside. Adrift and increasingly unable to connect with the emotionally unavailable Bruno or even with her own thoughts and feelings, Anna tries to rouse herself with new experiences: German language classes, Jungian analysis, and a series of sexual affairs she enters with an ease that surprises even her.

But Anna can’t easily extract herself from these affairs. When she wants to end them, she finds it’s difficult. Tensions escalate, and her lies start to spin out of control. Having crossed a moral threshold, Anna will discover where a woman goes when there is no going back.

Intimate, intense, and written with the precision of a Swiss Army knife, Jill Alexander Essbaum’s debut novel is an unforgettable story of marriage, fidelity, sex, morality, and most especially self. Navigating the lines between lust and love, guilt and shame, excuses and reasons, Anna Benz is an electrifying heroine whose passions and choices readers will debate with recognition and fury. Her story reveals, with honesty and great beauty, how we create ourselves and how we lose ourselves and the sometimes disastrous choices we make to find ourselves.

Advance praise for Hausfrau

“With an elegance, precision, and surehandedness that recalls Marguerite Duras’s The Lover and Anita Brookner’s Hotel du Lac, Jill Alexander Essbaum gives us this exquisite tale of an expatriate American wife living in Switzerland and her sexual and psychic unraveling. Hausfrau stuns with its confidence and severe beauty, its cascading insights into the uses of erotic life and the nature of secrets, the urgency of compulsion and the difficulty of freedom. This is a rare and remarkable debut.”—Janet Fitch, #1 New York Times bestselling author of White Oleander

“I was mesmerized by this book. Hausfrau creates a complete, engrossing, and particular world where nothing is as easy as it should be, according to the hopeful stories we tell ourselves. It’s a corrective novel, taking character, destiny, and our choices as seriously as a novelist can.”—Sheila Heti, author of How Should a Person Be?

“Hot damn is Hausfrau a beautiful, heart-wrenching novel. It casts a spell that doesn’t stop working until that wonderful final line. Jill Alexander Essbaum has a seismic talent, and it shows on every page of her first novel. Just read this bad boy. Like right now.”—Victor LaValle, author of The Devil in Silver


From the Hardcover edition.

For readers of Claire Messud and Mary Gaitskill comes a striking debut novel of marriage, fidelity, sex, and morality, featuring a fascinating heroine who struggles to live a life with meaning.

Hausfrau
haus·frau \haus-frau\ n 1: Origin: German.
Housewife, homemaker. 2: A married woman. 3: A novel by jill alexander essbaum

Anna was a good wife, mostly.

Anna Benz, an American in her late thirties, lives with her Swiss husband, Bruno—a banker—and their three young children in a postcard-perfect suburb of Zürich. Though she leads a comfortable, well-appointed life, Anna is falling apart inside. Adrift and increasingly unable to connect with the emotionally unavailable Bruno or even with her own thoughts and feelings, Anna tries to rouse herself with new experiences: German language classes, Jungian analysis, and a series of sexual affairs she enters with an ease that surprises even her.

But Anna can’t easily extract herself from these affairs. When she wants to end them, she finds it’s difficult. Tensions escalate, and her lies start to spin out of control. Having crossed a moral threshold, Anna will discover where a woman goes when there is no going back.

Intimate, intense, and written with the precision of a Swiss Army knife, Jill Alexander Essbaum’s debut novel is an unforgettable story of marriage, fidelity, sex, morality, and most especially self. Navigating the lines between lust and love, guilt and shame, excuses and reasons, Anna Benz is an electrifying heroine whose passions and choices readers will debate with recognition and fury. Her story reveals, with honesty and great beauty, how we create ourselves and how we lose ourselves and the sometimes disastrous choices we make to find ourselves.

Advance praise for Hausfrau

“With an elegance, precision, and surehandedness that recalls Marguerite Duras’s The Lover and Anita Brookner’s Hotel du Lac, Jill Alexander Essbaum gives us this exquisite tale of an expatriate American wife living in Switzerland and her sexual and psychic unraveling.Hausfrau stuns with its confidence and severe beauty, its cascading insights into the uses of erotic life and the nature of secrets, the urgency of compulsion and the difficulty of freedom. This is a rare and remarkable debut.”—Janet Fitch, #1 New York Times bestselling author of White Oleander

“I was mesmerized by this book. Hausfrau creates a complete, engrossing, and particular world where nothing is as easy as it should be, according to the hopeful stories we tell ourselves. It’s a corrective novel, taking character, destiny, and our choices as seriously as a novelist can.”—Sheila Heti, author of How Should a Person Be?

“Hot damn, is Hausfrau a beautiful, heart-wrenching novel. It casts a spell that doesn’t stop working until that wonderful final line. Jill Alexander Essbaum has a seismic talent, and it shows on every page of her first novel. Just read this bad boy. Like right now.”—Victor LaValle, author of The Devil in Silver