QUEEN OF THE NIGHT - A Short Book About My Mother

A small town in Switzerland. A household consisting of a woman and her son. There is no man, there are men. And money is always scarce; tenderness even more so.

Lukas Bärfuss's mother was a woman without education and without prospects, but with an unquenchable desire for freedom. She saw the child as a shackle; she had not chosen this life. A "Rabenmutter" (a neglectful mother), as she called herself; her son ended up on the streets. She only possessed the weapon of the powerless: a sharp tongue. And in old age, she was left with no other option than poverty migration to the Dominican Republic - leaving one of the wealthiest countries in the world, where her final years had become unaffordable.

The son had to master the art of surviving his mother early on. Today, recalling his life through writing, he poses the question of where personal responsibility ends and the responsibility of an entire society begins in a miserable life.