Reading and Conversation with Helene Bukowski: Who Wouldn't Want to Stay in Life

At the piano this evening: pianist Sofja Gülbadamova

A Rebellion Against Loneliness

In 1985, a young pianist in Neubrandenburg takes her own life. Decades later, writer Helene Bukowski discovers her story. Carefully approaching Christina, she searches her biography for cracks and upheavals, but also for moments of great happiness.

She meets a father who wants to realize his own dreams through his daughter, a mother who loves to photograph, and a piano that stands immovably in the apartment. Bukowski follows Christina to Berlin, to the special music school with its cold practice rooms and daily drill - later to Moscow, to study at the conservatory, through torrential rain and nights full of snow. And she finds a disease for which a diagnosis exists only today.

"Bukowski's language has an almost magical beauty" Deutschlandfunk