NIGHTMARE OF THE EMBRYOS literary translator Caroline Froh in Conversation with Sarah Haas

Join us Sunday, June 7th at 4:30pm at Garcia Street Books for a discussion of the book Nightmare of the Embryos with literary translator and author Caroline Froh, in conversation with author Sarah Haas.

 Nightmare of the Embryos 

 Literature  by Mariella Mehr  

 Translated from German by Caroline Froh 

 With a contribution by Caroline Froh 

Nightmare of the Embryos is a stunning collection of short fictional works by the Swiss writer Mariella Mehr (1947–2022), one of the most groundbreaking German-language writers of her time and simultaneously one of the most neglected. Mehr, a Yenish author, was subjected to the Swiss government-funded assimilationist campaign targeting nomadic or “Gypsy” populations. Her experiences drove her to use her writing to explore systems of violence, power, and abuse. Over the course of her career, she drew from a dark interior space, inventing new ways to depict pain and write the body. These magnificent, short pieces are drawn from published and unpublished works (many have never even appeared in German) and reveal Mehr as a master stylist. The title story surreally traces Mehr’s emergence into adulthood after growing up in Swiss children’s homes (“I woke up on a mountain of rubble that should have been called childhood”); another, “Island Body,” is a love story gone sour, narrated on a beach island surreally by sea grass and sand dunes; “Did You Hear” describes the writer, who, with her questioning, longing, and fear, visits St. Lawrence’s chapel in the Rhine valley where “for someone like me, brought up Catholic, mortal sin has remained the secret par excellence.” As in a psychic panopticon, these pieces give us glimpses into the Yenish community, nighttime bars, imagined landscapes and dreams, and the Holocaust. Translated brilliantly and with an afterword by Caroline Froh, Nightmare of the Embryos is a rich, imagistic, and linguistically inventive collection of works, by an author who has been described as the “Joan of Arc of the Yenish people."

Nightmare of the Embryos will be on sale at the event

Caroline Froh is a literary translator from German. Her work has appeared in journals including Harper's, Lit Hub, and McSweeney's, and her most recent book, Nightmare of the Embryos: A Collection of Short Writings by Mariella Mehr, was published by New Directions in March of 2026. Caroline holds an MFA in Literary Translation from the University of Iowa, where she was also a Provost’s Postgraduate Visiting Writer. She is the recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the PEN/Heim Translation Fund, and the American Literary Translator’s Association. Caroline lives and works in the mountains of northern New Mexico

Sarah Haas is a writer living in New Mexico. She is an Editor at Large at Brink Literary, and her writing has appeared in Literary Hub, Longreads, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. Her debut book, Jealousy: A Memoir, publishes in November (Catapult). 

Info and pre-orders for her upcoming book can be found here