Andrea Sawatzki shares memories of a dramatic childhood

The well-known film and television actress Andrea Sawatzki will read from her new, autofictional novel "Brunnenstraße" on January 15 in Frankfurt's Kleist Forum. With admirable strength and openness, she writes in it about her dramatic childhood and everyday life with her father, who suffers from Alzheimer's.

In 1971, journalist Günther Sawatzki is removed from his post in London and returns to Germany. After the death of his wife, he wants to be with his mistress, with whom he has a daughter: Andrea. But it soon turns out that this worldly and educated man is heavily in debt and seriously ill. The mother has to go back to work as a night nurse and ten-year-old Andrea takes care of the demented father, who is moody, impatient and hot-tempered. An interplay of closeness and estrangement, admiration and excessive demands, excessive love and abysmal hatred unfolds between the two - until its catastrophic end.

A touching examination of a painful past, a child's overwhelming demands, and a society that turns a blind eye to the burden of caring relatives.