Don’t be sad, he says turning around to me, all good things must come to an end.
Leave me alone, I say but Rainer won’t let it go, he says, come on I’ll drive you around a bit and you can take in the pretty sites, the Reichstag and Friedrichstrasse.
No just drive me here, I say handing Rainer the piece of paper with Amir’s address on it.
In that disgusting part of town?
Like we live any better, I say.
That’s enough of that, says Rainer.
Drive me there, I say, or I’m getting out of the car and I’ll take the train.
Fine, fine, says Rainer putting on the radio.
My eyes are burning. I don’t want to cry, not in front of Rainer, I fold up the piece of paper with Amir’s address, folding it smaller and smaller, I press it together as hard as I can and it helps. When I was younger and I skinned my knee at the playground or whatever, Mama always said it’ll be healed long before you get married. Skinned knees and jammed thumbs might heal but nothing else does, nothing on this rotten earth heals. I think I hate Mama and I hate Papa too, much more than Mama, Rainer I don’t care about and you can’t hate someone you don’t even care about.
Rainer turns up the radio. ‘When Will The Clouds Part’ is playing but it’s not the normal version with the normal verses, in this version people answer the question what does happiness mean to you and then in between the singer sings, she sings when will the clouds part and then someone else starts talking about happiness and how they define it. They say stuff like happiness is being free or happiness is never losing laughter, having fun in life, they say happiness is having someone who loves me, or it’s wanting to hold onto a moment.
Man how Jameelah and I always hated this song. We hated it because we thought it was stupid to think back on moments in your life that you wish you could hold onto because moments like that somehow never happen, at least not moments like the ones in the song.
The day we first drank Tiger Milk, that was a good moment, when we started using O-language and started going to Kurfürsten, those were good moments too. It’s funny, but I can remember all sorts of things from my childhood now but the things that happened just a few years ago, as we started to become adults, I can barely remember those things. Drinking Tiger Milk and going to Kurfürsten, those were good moments but I have no idea who came up with the idea, no idea why we decided to wear the striped stockings, I don’t have the slightest idea when it became a game or which one of us came up with the recipe for Tiger Milk. I don’t know when and why we started to speak O-language, I don’t know why we ended up on Kurfürsten of all streets and with the men there, I don’t know any of that, I just know that we always thought nothing would ever go wrong, nothing would happen, as long as we didn’t go anywhere alone, never alone.
Did you love this book as much as we did?
Share your reading experience at
www.headofzeus.com/newvoices
@stefdevelasco
#tigermilk
For more information, click one of the links below:
Stefanie de Velasco
An invitation from the publisher
About this Book
Nini and Jameelah are best friends. They’re going to be best friends forever.
As the long summer holidays stretch out before them, Berlin becomes their playground. The days all merge into one: swimming, smoking, shoplifting, and hanging out with friends from their estate. At night they descend on the red light district, impersonating the prostitutes there in order to practise for their first time, giggling to each other, tipsy on the Tiger Milk – their homemade cocktail – they’ve been sipping all day.
But then, one night, Nini and Jameelah witness a devastating crime that threatens to ruin everything.
Tiger Milk is an explosive story of love, death and rebellion and of an extraordinary friendship.
Reviews
‘Nails the undertone of an untethered, feral generation.’
Die Welt
‘A novel of rebellion, love, death, and an extraordinary friendship.’
Bucher
About the Author
STEFANIE DE VELASCO lives and works in Berlin. In 2011, she received the Literature Prize Prenzlauer Berg for the first chapters of Tiger Milk and was shortlisted for the Aspekte Literature Prize for Best Debut 2013. This is her first novel.
Contact her via Twitter: @stefdevelasco
Find out more at: www.headofzeus.com/newvoices
TIM MOHR has translated such authors as Alina Bronsky, Charlotte Roche, and Wolfgang Herrndorf. His own writing has appeared in the New York Times, Daily Beast, and Playboy. Prior to starting his writing career he made his living as a club DJ in Berlin.
An Invitation from the Publisher
We hope you enjoyed this book. We are an independent publisher dedicated to discovering brilliant books, new authors and great storytelling. Please join us at www.headofzeus.com and become part of our community of book-lovers.
We will keep you up to date with our latest books, author blogs, special previews, tempting offers, chances to win signed editions and much more.
If you have any questions, feedback or just want to say hi, please drop us a line on [email protected]
@HoZ_Books
HeadofZeusBooks
The story starts here
Originally published in the German language as Tigermilch by Stefanie de Velasco. Copyright 2013, Verlag Kiepenheuer & Witsch GmBH & Co. KG,
Cologne/Germany (2013)
First published in the UK in 2014 by Head of Zeus Ltd.
Copyright © Stefanie de Velasco, 2013
Translation copyright © Tim Mohr
The translation of this work was supported by a grant from the Goethe-Institut which is funded by the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The lines from The Modern Witch’s Spell Book (here) are reproduced by kind permission.
The moral right of Stefanie de Velasco to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
9 7 5 3 1 2 4 6 8
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN (HB) 9781781857441
ISBN (XTPB) 9781781858134
ISBN (E) 9781781857434
Head of Zeus Ltd
Clerkenwell House
45-47 Clerkenwell Green
London EC1R 0HT
www.headofzeus.com
Table of Contents
Cover
Welcome Page
Dedication
Epigraph
I wouldn’t have even noticed it
It’s still the middle of the day
Mama lays on the sofa
We have to stay for detention
When Jameelah and I go shoplifting
Today is the last day of school
The next morning I ring the bell
We buy a Müller milk container
On TV people who’ve seen something bad
The birthday card with Papa’s address
Noura always says you should
Mama, I call when I unlock the door
Ramadan has arrived
I’m tired, the usual condition during
Today I found an eyelash
About this Book
Reviews
About the Author
An Invitation from the Publisher
Copyright
Milk
Tiger Milk Page 22