Jan Wilm - "Sachertorte und andere Fiktionen". Book premiere

"The story must end without him, now that the story has been written."

Did you know that the overdub technique was invented in the 19th century by the German-Czech pianist Jan Jindřich Kašpar Dienstbier, after he lost his left hand? Or that so many ancient statues of the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius are missing a nose because he simply didn't have one? If not - there's a straightforward reason: they are fictions.

In his debut story collection "Sachertorte und andere Fiktionen", Jan Wilm explores the power of the fictional. Across 18 stories he argues that fiction is not merely a mode of literary production but a fundamental stance toward the world. This becomes clear when the parents of a murdered child find, through their writing and filmmaking, a shared way to grieve - or when a Japanese office worker in Vienna goes looking for the real Sachertorte and discovers that what the Hotel Sacher serves him has nothing to do with what he had in mind. In the end, even the so-called original turns out to be a fiction.

The evening will be moderated by Hans-Jürgen Balmes. Admission: 6,-/9,-/12,- € (pay as you wish).

Jan Wilm, born in 1983, lives in Frankfurt am Main as a writer and translator. He completed his doctorate at Goethe University Frankfurt on the philosophical dimensions of J. M. Coetzee's work and has translated, among others, Maggie Nelson, Lydia Davis, Arundhati Roy, and Joshua Cohen, earning numerous awards for his translations. His novel "Winterjahrbuch" appeared in 2019, the essay "Ror. Wolf. Lesen." in 2022 (both with Schöffling), and the essay "Bärtierchen" in the Naturkunden series in 2025.

Hans-Jürgen Balmes, born in 1958 in Koblenz, was an editor and translator at Ammann Verlag and from 1999 until his retirement in 2024 served as head of international literature at S. Fischer Verlag and co-editor of Neue Rundschau.