Balagan | mit Boris Schumatsky

Contemporary Jewish Perspectives | Reading Series | by Rebecca Maria Salentin | an event presented by Neues Schauspiel Leipzig

The Russian-Jewish narrator in Boris Schumatsky’s new novel*The Seine Flows into the Black Sea*lives in Berlin; he can no longer visit his ailing mother in Moscow because he faces the threat of arrest there. All he has left are phone calls with her voice, which grows ever fainter, memories of growing up under a violent dictatorship, and the countless secrets that were shared at his parents’ kitchen table.

Above all, there are the stories of the energetic Natalia, who once worked as a concierge in Paris at the hotel where Paul Celan stayed, and who has more to say about Celan’s life and loves than scholarship has uncovered. Schumatsky convincingly weaves together his political despair over Russia’s war against Ukraine and the antisemitism on his doorstep with childhood memories and a personal interpretation of Celan’s life, writing, and death.

As part ofTACHELES—Year of Jewish Culture in Saxony 2026—the reading series“Balagan—Contemporary Jewish Voices” is launching, conceived and moderated by Rebecca Maria Salentin. Balagan means chaos, confusion, a “little bit of everything, please.” That’s exactly what this reading series feels like: a relaxed, lively gathering where literature, conversations, laughter, and diverse perspectives are shared. You can look forward to open conversations about writing and contemporary issues, sometimes with, sometimes without an explicit focus on Jewish topics, always sensitively moderated and without any set guidelines for where the evening must go.

Rebecca Maria Salentinis an author, speaker, and moderator. From 2019 to 2023, she launched the literary show *Die schlecht gemalte Deutschlandfahne*. Her most recent bestsellers are *Klub Drushba* and *Iron Woman*. Her work has been honored with numerous grants and awards.

Boris Schumatsky, born in Moscow in 1965, has lived as a freelance writer in Berlin and Munich since the mid-1990s. Schumatsky’s essays on political events appear in publications such as the *taz*, *ZEIT*, *NZZ*, and *SZ*, among others. In 2025, at the invitation of Philipp Tingler, he read an excerpt from *The Seine Flows into the Black Sea* in Klagenfurt at the Bachmann Competition, where he won the Deutschlandfunk Prize. Boris Schumatsky was shortlisted for the 2026 Wortmeldungen Literary Prize for Critical Essays.