Sarah Léon wrote Wanderer in 2016, at age twenty-one, four years after she had published her first work, the novella Mon Alban. The novella is narrated from the perspective of a mother writing to her musically-gifted son Alban, unable to send her letters since Alban disappeared over the Berlin wall, leaving her behind on the eastern side. In Mon Alban we already see the characters that will be re-worked in Wanderer: the opera singer Lennie (whose talent is on par with that of the pianist Lenny in Wanderer), Wilhelm, the best friend Alban abandons, and Alban of course, the wanderer. We also see a musical-literary ambition, in which sonatas, serenades, and opuses structure her narratives. Schubert’s Winterreise informs both Wanderer’s atmosphere and the essentials of the plot.