Heimsuchung

Reading and moderated conversation as part of the Harbour Front Literature Festival.

Jenny Erpenbeck, winner of the International Booker Prize 2024, tells in her novel "Heimsuchung" not the story of a family, but the story of a place: a summer house on a lake in the Mark becomes a witness to nearly a century of German history. Generations come and go, owners change, lives begin and end - personal fates and historical upheavals interweave into a panorama of memory and transience, homeland and dispossession, guilt and chance.

Martina Gedeck reads selected passages from the novel and brings Erpenbeck's poetic language to the stage for the first time together with the author. In the subsequent conversation, both discuss the creation of the novel, its international impact, and its contemporary relevance. The evening is given a special frame by the forthcoming cinema release of the film adaptation of "Heimsuchung" directed by Volker Schlöndorff, in which Gedeck plays one of the leading roles.

Jenny Erpenbeck is also known for "Kairos", "Gehen, ging, gegangen", and "Aller Tage Abend". Martina Gedeck became known to an international audience through "Das Leben der Anderen", "Der Baader Meinhof Komplex", and "Elementarteilchen".