A stunning novel, everyone should read it. This is Alina Bronsky's first novel. Her second, The Hottest Dishes of Tartar Cuisine, is also excellent. They have a lot in common: gritty stories of Russian emigrees in Germany told by unforgettable narrators. But they also show the range of Bronsky's imagination and voice not least the fact that this one is narrated by a 17 year old girl and Tartar Cuisine was narrated by a grandmother.

Broken Glass Park is a coming of age story with nothing whitewashed. Sascha lives in a Russian slum outside a German city. Her mother has just been murdered and she's left with her two half siblings and a relative who comes from Russia to take care of them. Sascha is brilliant, both cruel and kind, both strong and helpless. Following her mother's death she starts to spin further out of control. Has to be read.