Feuchtgebiete [Wetlands, 2008], the first novel by Charlotte Roche, chronicles the thoughts, memories, and experiences of the first-person narrator Helen Memel, hospitalized due to an infected anal lesion resulting from a shaving mishap. Helen, an 18-year-old secondary school student, expresses her musings over her sexually active youth and makes obvious her obsession with the human body in all manner of shapes and forms: she prefers natural secretions to hygiene and any sex—be it masturbation under her hospital bed, with a female prostitute, or any available young man—to no sex at all. Her story is told in a straightforward, colloquial style, very matter-of-factly, as if all of us ate our own …
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Citation: Strawser, Amy Kepple. "Feuchtgebiete". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 26 July 2010 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=27764, accessed 21 November 2024.]