Afterlives

18.10.2022 / 19:30 – 21:30
With Maaza Mengiste

Abdulrazak Gurnah in conversation with Maaza Mengiste

On October 18, author and Nobel laureate in literature Abdulrazak Gurnah will join together with author Maaza Mengiste (2022 fellow) to mark the publication of Gurnah’s novel Nachleben (Afterlives) in German. Set at the beginning of the twentieth century, Gurnah’s intergenerational tale of war and love focuses on people struggling for their integrity in the shadow of the colonial world order.

Maaza Mengiste’s works also deal with the afterlife of colonialism. Her most recent novel, The Shadow King, tells the story of Ethiopian resistance to the invasion of Benito Mussolini’s army in 1935. During a year of research spent in Italy, she went through archives, interviewed descendants of Italian soldiers, and collected photographs, diaries, and objects from the period at various flea markets. These materials also served as the basis for Project 3541, a memory project initiated by Mengiste that draws on written, visual, and oral traditions to shed light on the global and personal consequences of the Italo-Ethiopian War.

In English with simultaneous German translation by Lilian-Astrid Geese
Reading of the German texts: Abak Safaei-Rad

In cooperation with Haus der Kulturen der Welt, internationales literaturfestival berlin, and Penguin Verlag.

Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Auditorium
John-Foster-Dulles-Allee 10
10557 Berlin