“Everything started when I, an Austrian living in Slovakia, read about a Slovak who had been found dead in on of Austria’s rivers - naked.” The last time Denisa Soltísová was seen alive, she was wandering around in an austrian city; it was January the 19th 2008, at night , only wearing underwear. Days after this incident she was found – dead and naked. The 29-year-old woman was a collegegraduate, Slovak and worked round-the-clock as a elderly care nurse. The police closed the case: “Suicide”. Yet the autopsy, performed in Slovakia, showed traces of violence. It is 700 kilometres from Ratkovská Lehota, where Desisa lived, to the place she died. Two different worlds that are parted by 700 kilometres, linked only by commuting busses, full of nurses. Two different worlds in which Martin Leidenfrost tracked the traces of one of them who will never return to the other side of the borders.

They clean our toilets, take care of our kids and change grandma’s nappies – we hardly allow anyone so far into the privacy of our lives and homes as our cleaning ladies, babysitters or caretakers. Who are these ‘service providers’ with keys to our homes? Where are they from, what are their lives like? Journalist Sybille Hamann relentlessly investigates a work sector that our society can no longer live without. In her book she peeks behind closed doors, visits children left behind and encounters a world full of lies and feeling ashamed. To get an even closer look, she went undercover in the self-experiment of working as a cleaning lady under a false name. Full of hard and poignant facts, this book is a thrilling read.