Broder

with: Julia Westlake (moderation)
Reading and moderated discussion

"On the farm, only one counts - the son who stays. But the others, the second, third, fourth sons and the daughters who don't count, remain part of the herd whether they like it or not. Because they grew up among large animals, know their breath and their roar, and still carry the smell of milk and manure on them. Because they grew up believing in the old, unjust order: father, son and holy farm, it has always been this way."

Sentences like these make it immediately clear that Dörte Hansen is no romantic about rural life - but she doesn't ridicule the countryside with exposé poses either. She takes it seriously and shows, as she did in her bestseller "Mittagsstunde", that structural change in rural areas concerns us all.

At the centre is a family conflict: the highly modern, industrialised model farm of the Bahnsens was always one of the best - and yet it gets into trouble. When Broder Bahnsen returns after years, while his twin brother Henning, only a few minutes older and legally favoured, slowly loses control, the situation escalates. Doubts about this form of animal husbandry grow, faith in growth enters a crisis, humans and animals reach their limits.

Dörte Hansen worked for many years as an editor at NDR in Hamburg, gave up her position and began to write. Today she is considered one of Germany's most successful authors - every one of her books has been a bestseller and has been praised by critics from Süddeutsche Zeitung to ZEIT.