Sasha Marianna Salzmann was born in Volgograd in 1985 and grew up in Moscow. In 1995 she emigrated with her family to Germany and studied literature, theatre and media at the University of Hildesheim. She has been awarded multiple accolades for her plays, and Beside Myself was shortlisted for the German Book Prize in 2017. Salzmann now teaches creative writing in Germany, Turkey, Moldova, Spain, Italy and the USA.
`Beautifully written despite the darkness of its story and texture. There are hundreds of glimpses of worlds inside worlds...Beside Myself is both a cool thriller and a meditation on family.' * Saturday Paper * 'Sasha Marianna Salzmann's debut novel comes straight from the gates like a raging bull...Beside Myself is fiction at its highest purpose. If we read to understand ours and others' unbearable lightness-to try and make sense of our surroundings-this book is truly the contemporary counterpart to ideas on family, identity, time and place. It illuminates the gaps we previously thought were great divides, showing what more we can learn from each other.' * ArtsHub * `Salzmann thoughtfully and cleverly addresses the themes of memory, identity, and migration, asking if language, nationality, or gender are important for our self-definition.' * World of Literature Today *