When 55-year-old Helen Meier debuted with "Trockenwiese," no one knew that she had already written texts between 1955 and 1980 that were on par with her later published works in their directness, rebellious impetus, and unflinching female radicalism. This volume provides the first access to the early Helen Meier, and the 25 shorter or longer texts impress not only with the consistency with which her very own theme – the impossibility of love and the relentless search for it – is varied, but also with the seemingly inexhaustible diversity of situations, settings, and constellations. There is the death-obsessed woman who walks over a bridge, imagining the fall as an orgasm; there is the couple wandering into a narrow valley, increasingly trapped in a deadly dead end; there is the woman for whom a luxurious villa becomes hell in her isolation; the painter who drives his partner mad with erotic fantasies; the farmer's wife reflecting on her miserable life in the hospital; the doctor who seeks revenge for his wife's infidelity after decades; the disabled woman who submits to a mountain farmer in an animalistic way; or the writer who hates nothing more than the story she is supposed to read aloud. What aligns the early texts with the later ones is not only the themes and characters, but above all Helen Meier's unmistakably unique language, which lends authenticity, power, and intensity to the narrative.