Authors and works:

   

Larissa Boehning, born in 1971, grew up in Hamburg and has lived in Spain and Berlin. She works as a graphic designer, lecturer and freelance writer. She was awarded the Literaturpreis Prenzlauer Berg (2002) for the story ‘Schwalbensommer’ from a previous collection. Her debut novel Lichte Stoffe was longlisted for the German Book Prize in 2007 and earned her the Kulturpreis der Stadt Pinneberg and Mara Cassens Prize for the best debut novel of the year.

 

Featured novel: Das Glück der Zikaden (The Song of the Cicadas)

Nadja and Anton are forced to leave their Russian home in the late 1930s due to hostility towards German-Russian families such as theirs. Nadja hides her Russian identity during the war, but after her death their daughter Senta finds a picture of Stalin hidden in the piano. Born in Germany, Senta, despite the large family she creates with Michael, cannot forget Gregor, the father of her first child, who left her for socialist East Germany. Katarina, daughter of Senta and Gregor, finds out about her biological father only after Michael’s death. She sets out in search of Gregor, but underway becomes waylaid by a con man who is after her inheritance. Larissa Boehning’s novel is a tale of escape and exile, ideological hopes and failed reconciliations.

 

Monica Cantieni, born 1965 in Thalwil, Switzerland, lives in Wettingen (Switzerland) and Vienna. She also works for SRF, Swiss Radio and Television. Already published is the story »Hieronymus’ Children« as well as a large number of short stories in periodicals and anthologies. »Greenhorn« is her first novel.

Monica Cantieni has received numerous literary stipends and awards.

 

Featured novel: Grünschnabel  (Greenhorn)

 “My father bought me from the city for 365 Swiss francs. That’s a lot of money for a child with no eyes in her head.” With these words Monica Cantieni pulls readers into Grünschnabel, the funny and sad novel of a child up for adoption in 1970s Switzerland. Grünschnabel’s sullen reserve is softened by her empathy for the stream of friends who pass through her foster parents’ apartment – Spaniards, Africans, Yugoslavs – and who live precarious lives due to that era’s attitude toward “guest workers”. Grünschnabel is more than one family’s saga, tackling as it does issues such as cruelty to and by children, adultery and discrimination; Cantieni’s novel is one of compassion and humor, due in large part to the character of Grünschnabel herself.

 

 

Catalin Dorian Florescu, born in 1967 in Timisoara, Romania, fled with his parents to Zurich in 1982. He studied psychology and psychopathology at the University in Zurich, later working as a psychotherapist for drug addicts. Florescu published his first book in 2001. Since 2001 Florescu has written several essays, stories and novels and has received a number of literature prizes and scholarships, e.g. the Adelbert von Chamisso Prize in 2002, the Anna Seghers Prize in 2003 and the 2012 Eichendorff Literary Award. His featured novel Jakob beschliesst zu lieben (Jacob decides to love) was shortlisted for the 2011 Swiss Book Prize.

 

Featured novel: Jacob beschliesst zu lieben - Jacob decides to love

Jakob beschliesst zu lieben is the adventurous tale of Jacob Obertin, born in a Romanian village to Elsa Obertin, a wealthy landownder, and to Jakob, who marries her for her fortune and takes her name. Jacob is the narrator of this fast-paced family epic set between the end of the 1920s and early 1950s. But the story, which focuses on his troubled relationship with his father who disinherited him in favor of his illegitimate Romani half-brother, is combined with a three-century history of the Obertin family, tracing it back to the Thirty Years War. Romanian-born Florescu employs dense, fantastic and sometimes grotesque imagery to relate the fate of a clan whose hunger for land and power reflects the chaos and the harshness of Central European history.

 

 

Inka Parei, born in Frankfurt am Main in 1967, lives in Berlin.
Her first two novels, Die Schattenboxerin and Was Dunkelheit war, have been translated into French, Spanish, Swedish, Polish and Chinese, among other languages. In 2011 Seagull Books published Die Schattenboxerin as The Shadow-Boxing Woman, and will publish her new novel, Die Kältezentrale, as The Cold Room, with both titles translated by Katy Derbyshire. In 2000 Inka Parei was awarded the Hans Erich Nossack Prize and in 2003 she received the Bachmann Prize.

 

Featured novel:  Die Kältezentrale (The Cooling Station)

Berlin, 2006: a man who worked as a mechanic for the East German party newspaper Neues Deutschland during the 1980s and later left the GDR receives a call from his ex-wife, Martha. She’s in a hospital, waiting for an exact diagnosis of her cancer. In an attempt to help her, the man has returned to Berlin to try and reconstruct the events of several crucial days that took place in early May 1986. Was a Ukrainian truck that Martha came into contact with contaminated with radiation? Why does the death of a former colleague, for which he has blamed himself for many years, suddenly appear dubious? The narrator soon begins to lose control of his life and drifts into a desperate search for direction, triggered by a rupture in his past with which he has never come to terms.

 

 

Linda Stift, born 1969 in Austria, studied German literature at the University of Vienna. Stift currently lives and works in Vienna as a freelance writer for publications such as the Wiener Zeitung, and has published numerous works in magazines and anthologies. In 2007 she was awarded the Alfred Gesswein Literaturpreis and in 2009 was nominated for the prestigious Ingeborg Bachmann Prize. Past works include Kingpeng, her debut novel, and Stierhunger. Her most recent work Kein einziger Tag (Not a Single Day) was published in 2011.

 

Featured novel: Kein einziger Tag (Not a single Day)

Paul is anything but pleased when his brother Paco, a mediocre soap opera actor, turns up in town for a filming. The brothers are Siamese twins, but Paco has never come to terms with their separation and Paul has had to move more than once to keep his brother at arm’s length. Now Paco again bursts into his life with a vengeance. He ends up staying the night at his brother’s after they’ve been out on a drinking spree, and after that Paul simply can’t get rid of him. Unfortunately, Paul’s girlfriend, Jenny, is delighted with his twin. And then, to Paul’s mounting panic, Paco makes it onto a TV reality show, where the winner receives free cosmetic surgery – just what kind being decided by the audience. Paco sees the show as a great boost for his career, whereas Paul is disgusted by his craving for publicity. But Paul, too, has his dark side, and it is coming to light…

 

 

Erwin Uhrmann, born in 1978, lives in Vienna. He studied political science and communications in Vienna and founded the art-club „Kunstwerft“ together with artists, musicians, and writers. He writes reports on art for magazines and catalogues and works for the privately financed Essl Museum in Klosterneuburg, Austria. In 2005/06 he received the Austrian State stipend for literature. Uhrmann has published short stories in anthologies and magazines since 2002, and together with Alexander Peer published in 2008, the anthology Ostseeteam, focusing on the Baltic sea region. In 2010 Limbus Verlag published his first novel Der lange Nachkrieg (The War Beyond) which was followed in 2011 by the novel Glauber Rocha.

 

Featured novel: Der lange Nachkrieg (The war beyond)

Hector’s great aunt died long ago and he barely knew her, but suddenly the circumstances of her death in a nursing home appear enormously important to him. Hector - young, well-educated, an academic just setting out on a successful career - begins looking into the death, but perhaps he actually is plunging into the past in order to avoid taking control of his own life, which increasingly appears to be unraveling. Over the course of a hot summer Hector gradually loses his connection to reality and to other people - his girlfriend Carla proves to be of no help to him, his mother even less. In his confused and state, vacillating between reality and illusion, lethargy and aggression, he wanders from Austria to Trieste to Belgrade.

 

This event is moderated by Susan Bernofsky.

DAAD sponsored event.

 

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