Katrin Costa
Katrin Costa
Katrin's writing style reflects her years of dedication to learning and developing her craft, as well as her journey of telling her story in a second language. German is her first language, and she didn’t speak or understand English until she was 25. Her writing is poetic yet simple, using short, rhythmic phrases and everyday language to tell deeply personal stories. The result is an intimate and accessible style that captures both the ordinary and the profoundly difficult moments of her life.
https://www.purplecompasspress.com.au/
The Girl in the
Purple Jacket
**GOLD Winner 2026 Literary Titan Book Awards - Fiction**
Inspired by the True Story of One Woman's Courageous Escape from Behind the Iron Curtain
She would rather risk death than spend one more day under the former GDR communist regime.
The Girl in the Purple Jacket traces the true story of Katrin Costa through the character Karlina, born in East Germany in 1969 under the constraints of the Cold War. Growing up behind the Iron Curtain, she carried an early, instinctive knowing that life should be larger than the narrow future laid out for her. This inner knowing became the quiet compass she followed on faith, even when the world gave her nothing to believe in.
At twenty, she risked everything to escape through Prague into West Germany, carrying little more than determination, a purple jacket given in kindness, and an unshakable belief that a better life was possible.
For Karlina, the crossing became a silent test of instinct, fear and courage, marking the moment she began rebuilding herself from the ground up. She moved through refugee camps and unfamiliar systems, learning to survive in a society shaped by both opportunity and indifference, where freedom brought possibilities she had never known, but also loneliness, uncertainty and the challenge of starting over with nothing.
'....Katrin Costa's The Girl in the Purple Jacket is an inspired true historical story set in East Germany in 1989, where twenty-year-old Karlina lives under a government that decides where its citizens may travel and how openly they speak....The Girl in the Purple Jacket is outstanding historical [auto]fiction, and Karlina is written with real maturity as she reaches for a life beyond one laid out for her. The period detail is superb, placing her in side a Germany undergoing enormous social change and giving that world a lived-in quality. The prose is especially good at establishing place....Readers who have loved the likes of Robotham's The Girl Behind the Wall and Sullivan's The Last Green Valley are in for a real treat. Very highly recommended.' Asher Syed, Readers' Favorite
Asher Syed, Readers' Favourite
‘Katrin Costa’s The Girl in the Purple Jacket is a moving work of historical fiction inspired by true events, blending the intimacy of a memoir with the emotional pull of a coming-of-age story. Set against the political upheaval surrounding the fall of the Berlin Wall, the novel introduces Karlina, a twenty-year-old woman growing up in East Germany in 1989. She’s spent her life navigating a world where conformity is expected, personal freedoms are restricted, and questioning authority can carry serious consequences. But Karlina has always imagined something beyond the life prescribed for her.…One of the book’s greatest strengths is how convincingly Costa captures the emotional realities of life in a divided Germany. Her descriptions of government surveillance, limited opportunities, family expectations, and everyday shortages reveal how political systems can shape even the smallest personal decisions….’
Literary Titan
‘…From the foreword and each chapter after I had tears in my eyes following Karlina’s courageous struggles escaping from behind the iron curtain. Once on the other side there was the escape from her own internal prison which was a result of the programming she had received under communist regime. Eventually going on to finding the love of her life….’
