The most absurd things happen in Norman Erikson Pasaribu’s short stories. Even though the characters struggle with loneliness and heartache as queer people, they are rarely completely lost. The best weapon against despair is humor. But how do you create it in your writing? This workshop is about humor as
When books by African authors are first published in Europe or the USA, this has an impact on their publication in Africa: licenses and translations are expensive, which means that books are often not published where they were written – and only reach the African audience to a limited extent.
Two who have written about loneliness and the search for solace, Susan Sontag, the experience of addiction and the regenerative power of gardening. In conversation, Daniel Schreiber and Olivia Laing discuss the art of writing literary non-fiction and favorite passages from each other’s books – from Schreiber’s »Alone« to Laing’s
The Wall fell 35 years ago. The millennials don’t know a divided Germany, but they do know its aftereffects. Having grown up in an everyday life that was characterized by joblessness and hopelessness, violence and xenophobia, but also by flexibility, emancipation, and social change, it’s particularly the East Germans among
Community, quality of life, and participation almost always play a central role in the choice of where to spend one’s life. So why is there still talk of an urban-rural divide? Human geographer Johann Braun, sociologist Rainald Manthe, and the author Karen Duve investigate. Focusing on the political landscape, they
After Trump’s election as president, Obama asked: »What if we were wrong?« Now, one week after the state elections in Thuringia and Saxony, the question should be put to Germany. What does honest analysis look like, away from party politics and election campaign mode? Katarina Barley, Petra Pau, Thomas de
German Book Premiere 1978: Former Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro is kidnapped and murdered. Italy competes for third place at the soccer World Cup in Argentina under the military dictatorship. The Vatican records a year with three popes. Meanwhile, UFO sightings are on the rise … The Wu Ming writers’
Playful, experimental, and body-conscious: this is how the new generation of LGBTQI+ authors from Southeast Asia present themselves. Marylyn Tan, Norman Erikson Pasaribu, and Tash Aw read poems and award-winning stories, some of which have been translated exclusively for the festival. They blur the boundaries between genders, evoke the sensuality
What can’t be talked about, has to be shown. This literary event does not bring the texts to the stage, but rather the writing itself. Techniques and tricks, rules and how they are broken. Collective writing in the writers’ room. Authors meet their protagonists and apply the tools of storytelling
Climate change has happened. Does the global community still have a chance of finding a politically controlled way out of the ecological disaster without having to shake the foundations of democratic structures? According to sociologist Jens Beckert and historian Hedwig Richter, it does, but »the most pressing problem facing Western
German Book Premiere A right-wing party has taken control of Ireland; the country is sliding into totalitarianism. Larry Stack, a leading trade unionist, disappears at a rally. His wife Eilish is left behind with their children and must soon make tough decisions… A dystopian nightmare, told in a breathless style.
German Book Premiere In this 1000-page epic, Sofia Andrukhovych explores the painful history of her country through the fates of three women. She interweaves the war in eastern Ukraine with the repression under Stalin, and sheds light on Jewish-Ukrainian relations and the Holocaust under German occupation. »If ever a novel
