Maria Stepanova: Der Absprung

07.10.2024 / 19:30 – 21:30
With Maria Stepanova

Book premiere
The writer in conversation with her translator Olga Radetzkaja

How do you write when the words come apart in your mouth? What do you do when your country only stands for death and destruction? Maria Stepanova discusses her new novel, Der Absprung (Suhrkamp), with her translator Olga Radetzkaja.

A writer named M. has been in European exile for several months when she departs for a neighboring country—a festival has invited her to give readings. The trip is fraught with mishaps: the connecting train she was supposed to take doesn’t exist, the charger cable for her phone gets lost. No one is waiting for her at the border station in F., and contact with the organizers has been broken off. The situation fills her with relief. M. wanders through the city and what she encounters is nothing but promises of freedom: an escape room, a traveling circus, a fleeting acquaintance—and ultimately the long-awaited chance to cast her identity aside and disappear. But can she pull it off? Sasha Marianna Salzmann states: “The Russian language, my mother tongue, has degenerated into a symbol frozen in an imaginary past. A symbol of lies. Of nostalgia. Of aggression. Maria Stepanova’s entire body of work has always offered stoic resistance.”

More about the book on suhrkamp.de

Literarisches Colloquium Berlin
Am Sandwerder 5, Berlin

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