Der Literarische Salon mit András Visky

20:00 I Word I Concert hall

There are new publications that are so acclaimed that one almost becomes skeptical. "I've never read a book like this before," wrote Herta Müller in DIE ZEIT about András Visky's novel Die Aussiedlung: "It's a sensation." And Péter Nadás even said: "A book that is hardly ever written in a century." And then you start reading it and know after just a few pages: Indeed, it is nothing less than a book of the century. András Visky, born in 1957, is a renowned Hungarian playwright and director. At the age of 65, he published his first and only novel, The Resettlement, in which he tells of his childhood in exile in Eastern Romania after his father, a pastor, was sentenced to 22 years of forced labor. The family settles in caves and abandoned villages, exposed to the arbitrariness of drunken guards. Clan detention. "I remember everything and will write about everything when the time comes, I say to our mother to comfort her when I catch her crying, I use writing as a synonym for revenge without knowing what I'm saying."

The conversation is translated from Hungarian by Katalin Schmitz-Molnár. Lavinia Nowak reads from the German text.

// Lavinia Nowak (reading), Navid Kermani (host), Guy Helminger (host), András Visky (author), Katalin Schmitz-Molnár (translation)