Caroline Wahl

Caroline Wahl (born 1995 in Mainz) is a German author. Her debut novel, 22 Bahnen, was published in April 2023 by DuMont Buchverlag. Written from a first-person perspective, it explores the life of Tilda, a student trying to study mathematics while being responsible for caring for her 11-year-old half-sister.

Biography
Caroline Wahl grew up with three siblings near Heidelberg and Stuttgart. After her school days, she studied German studies and German literature in Tübingen and Berlin. After that and among other things, she worked as a publishing assistant of the Diogenes Verlag in Zürich. During this time, Caroline Wahl wrote her first novel, 22 Bahnen, in three months. Her love of the sea led her to Northern Germany in 2022 where she worked for a communications agency in Rostock. Since the success of her debut novel, she lives as an independent author in the Hansestadt.

Literary works
Her debut novel, 22 Bahnen, was published in April 2023 by the Cologne-based DuMont Buchverlag after seven publishers in total showed interest in the story. The author describes the everyday and family life of the student Tilda, from a first-person perspective. Amidst this, she cannot simply focus entirely on her demanding mathematics studies, but because her mother is an alcoholic and their father have left the family, she also has to look after her 11-year-old half-sister Ida.

Reviewers of the novel, like Elke Heidenreich, Christine Westermann or Denis Scheck affirm that the author has found a poignant writing style, in which the destiny of both sisters can be authentically perceived by the reader, without the author addressing the reasons for the mother's alcoholism. The writer herself has no experience of addiction problems within her family, but she talked, among other things, with people who work in addiction wards in order to portray the subject realistically.

Caroline Wahl has always wanted to write a novel about a strong, self-wiled but also sensible young woman and particularly, the novels by Alina Bronsky's Scherbenpark, Angelika Klüssendorf's Das Mädchen as well as Spieltrieb by Juli Zeh functioned as a role model for her. The novel's style and subject especially appeal to young readers, and 22 Bahnen was discussed on the social network BookTok soon after its publication. The German radio and television broadcasting corporation Norddeutscher Rundfunk chose the story to be the NDR's book of the month in may 2023.

The novel could place itself among the top 20 on the Spiegel's best seller list in the calendar year 2023 and it has been sold more than 100,000 times in the same year.

In its year of publication, the story received the book prize of Stiftung Ravensburger Verlag and the German literature prizes Ulla-Hahn-Autorenpreis and Grimmelshausen-Förderpreis, and it was chosen to be the favourite novel of independent bookshops.

The author's second novel "Windstärke 17" is set on the island of Rügen and deals with the future life of Ida, a character already introduced in the first novel. It will be published in 2024.

List of works

 * 22 Bahnen, novel. DUMONT-Buchverlag, Köln 2023, ISBN 9783832160456.
 * Windstärke 17, novel. DUMONT-Buchverlag, Köln 2024, ISBN 9783832168414.