Blueprint

‘This powerful novel tells a story of a time past that feels eerily reflective of the present’ Sunday Times

‘Bring[s] to life the Bauhaus movement’ Elle

LUISE SCHILLING WANTS TO TEAR DOWN THE PAST AND BUILD A NEW FUTURE.

At the beginning of the turbulent 1920s, she leaves her father’s conservative household in Berlin for Weimar’s Bauhaus university, with dreams of studying architecture.

But when she arrives and encounters a fractured social world of mystics and formalists, communists and fascists, the dichotomy between the rigid past and a hopeful future turns out to be a lot more muddled than she thought.

She gets involved with a cult-like spiritual group, looking for community and falling in love with elusive art student Jakob. Luise has ambitions of achieving a lot in life – but little of it has to do with paying homage to great men. Surrounded by luminaries, like Gropius and Kandinsky, she throws herself into the dreams and ideas of her epoch.

While her art school friends retreat into a world of self-improvement and jargon, her home city of Berlin is embroiled in street fights. Amid the social upheaval, she has to decide where she stands. From technology to art, romanticism to the avant-garde, populism to the youth movement, Luise encounters themes, utopias and ideas that still shape us to the present day. Blueprint is a young woman’s dispatch from a past culture war that rings all too familiar.

Perfect for fans of The Secret History by Donna Tartt and The Last Nude by Ellis Avery.