Kafka Band Plays Kafka Plus Reading: Jaroslav Rudis Presents His New Novel "Where the Dead Speak" - Kafka Band

Reading, conversation, and concert

Timed to coincide with the Czech Republic's guest-of-honour appearance at the Frankfurt Book Fair, Jaroslav Rudis' new novel "Where the Dead Speak" has just been published. Lorenzo, Caspar, and Miss Detroit - three friends somewhere between midlife and life-weariness - travel through the heart of Central Europe, this time not by train but in an old Saab. In the boot: the bones of a Nazi criminal, stolen from a Berlin cemetery to stay ahead of plundering reichsbürgers. What begins as an absurd mission becomes a road trip across cemeteries and into the past.

On the back seat, Lorenzo attempts to write a poem about dead European poets. Miss Detroit dreams of becoming a cemetery botanist. Caspar remembers his great-uncle, who died in the war as a child and has haunted the family story ever since. With each kilometre, the three friends draw closer together - and the question that grows louder at every grave demands an answer: What do the dead say when we listen to them? Moderation: Andreas Platthaus.

From 20:15: Concert - Kafka Band Plays Kafka

Kafka Band, centred on writer Jaroslav Rudis and musician and comic artist Jaromir 99, first performed in November 2013 at Literaturhaus Stuttgart with a programme devoted to Franz Kafka's novel fragment "The Castle". Concerts followed in German-speaking countries and abroad, two theatrical productions in Bremen, and two further albums dedicated to Kafka's "America" and "The Trial", both also in collaboration with Literaturhaus Stuttgart.

The ensemble includes some of the most renowned Czech musicians, among them members of the bands Priessnitz, Umakart, Letní kapela, and Tata Bojs: Dusan Neuwerth, Tomas Neuwerth, Zdenek Jurcik, Lukas Moravek, and Petr Weiser. Thirteen years after their first performance, they play in Stuttgart a selection from all their previous programmes.