I am freelance investigative journalist & non-fiction author reporting from around the world. My beats are environment & economy, science, society, travel and women.

Whilst Katharina Finke is travelling through Southeast Asia, she finds out that she is pregnant. Despite all the joy, she and her boyfriend David ask themselves: Is parenting compatible with a life on the move and cutting consumption? What does it mean to give up your own freedom and enter into the strongest of all possible bonds?

From shopping queen to travelling minimalist: living out of a suitcase is Katharina Finke’s daily life for years as she likes discovering foreign countries and people. Whilst doing so she learns to trust her impulses and explore her fears. She discovers that radical freedom makes you both deliriously happy and deeply lonely. This is a book about what it means to let go – and what it’s worth keeping hold of.

Without suspecting the nightmare in store for her, Amila’s parents send her to New Delhi at the age of nine. A mediator is to introduce her to a wealthy man. But fate does not mean well with her: after two years as a slave she is forced to marry a much older man. Amila is now 24 years old and the mother of five children – hard physical work, sex on command and being beaten arepart of her daily routine. But she won’t give up.