Luísa Sobral

A sweeping debut novel that intertwines the lives of two women across a divided Germany, revealing the hidden costs of love, history, and the walls—both real and invisible— that shape us.

Spanning the darkest decades of twentieth-century Germany, Not All Trees Die Standing is a tale of love, loss, and survival on both sides of the Berlin Wall.

Emmi comes of age in the shadow of Hitler’s rise to power. After losing her father to the war, she shoulders the burden of work from a young age—until a chance meeting with Markus, a man from East Berlin, offers her a glimpse of love and hope. Against her mother’s wishes but with her sister’s blessing, Emmi follows him across the border into the GDR. At first, happiness seems within reach. But when the Wall goes up, the price of loyalty and the weight of secrets begin to tear her world apart.

Years later, M. is born into a divided nation, the model child of socialism. Raised by a plant-loving nanny and devoted to a father she adores, M. grows up sheltered from the West, cocooned in a carefully crafted illusion. Until a shocking revelation cracks the façade—and she discovers that it isn’t only the Wall that hides another side.

With a bold structure and unforgettable characters, Luísa Sobral’s debut novel illuminates the intimate costs of history, asking what it means to love, to endure, and to see beyond the walls that shape us.

“Luísa Sobral crafts a complex work, where various “songs” intertwine, including first-person narrative, diary fragments, aphorisms, and short pieces resembling poems, together with the ever-present herbarium, whose plants, beyond accompanying the story, hold a healing power for the many afflictions suffered by the protagonists.” Público