Kamel Daoud und Navid Kermani - Huris / Wenn sich unsere Herzen gleich öffnen // Über Politik und Liebe. Zwei Autoren im Dialog

Two literary stars meet in an extraordinary double event. They are from the same generation, they know about each other, but they do not yet know each other: Kamel Daoud comes from Algeria, Navid Kermani has Iranian roots. What they both have in common is that they take a critical and differentiated approach to Islamic culture and its radicalization. For decades, Europe and the world have been shaken by Islamist attacks. However, this phenomenon is still not really understood.

The two authors present their latest books, which were published at the same time, and explore each other's work and their relationship to Islam, Islamism and the canon of values of the liberal West in conversation.

Awarded France's highest literary prize ("Prix Goncourt"), Daoud's "Houris" is currently being published in German. At the same time, Navid Kermani's "Wenn sich unsere Herzen öffnen. On politics and love."

The event is being held in cooperation with the Institut français Hambourg.

About the book "When our hearts open up. On politics and love."

In big politics and in our immediate living environment, rifts suddenly open up that we would not have thought possible. Navid Kermani uses key personal experiences - washing his own father's body, enjoying music together, a family visit to Ayatollah Khomeini or his daughter's wedding - to describe how social upheavals affect us in concrete terms, where enmity arises and why, despite everything, we can open our hearts to others without losing ourselves in the process.

The unity of the West, which has given us security for so long, is breaking down. Wars and genocides force us to take positions, which in turn lead to new conflicts. Democracy, with its compromises and balances of power, is becoming too complicated for many, but simple solutions come at the expense of the weak. In five topical, literarily stirring speeches, Navid Kermani combines his own experiences with historical events and the upheaval that is currently taking place in the world. No other German writer is able like him to turn the personal into the political and, conversely, to make political upheavals vivid on the basis of personal observations. And so his new book echoes the unique, always existential, never pathetic tone with which Kermani has captivated us time and time again since his famous speech in the Bundestag in 2014.

Publication date: August 21, 2025

About the author:

Navid Kermani is a habilitated Orientalist and lives as a freelance writer in Cologne. He has been awarded the Kleist Prize, the Joseph Breitbach Prize, the Friedrich Hölderlin Prize, the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade and, most recently, the Thomas Mann Prize for his work.

About the book "Huris"

Aube, a young Algerian woman, experienced the civil war of the 1990s first-hand, as evidenced not least by the scar that wraps around her neck like a smile. During the attack on her village, Islamists tried to slit her throat, but only her vocal cords were caught. It is not only the lack of a voice that silences Aube now, but also the state laws that forbid commemorating the civil war of that time. Her pain and rebellion do not reach the outside world. Aube can only speak to the daughter growing inside her. The secret pregnancy confronts the young Algerian woman with questions about the terrible past and a dark future: does she have the right to keep her child? Can she give life when it was almost snatched from her? Aube returns to her home village, where it all began, and seeks answers from the dead.

With "Huris", Kamel Daoud gives Algerian women the floor and takes a stand against the still prescribed forgetting of the civil war and its horrors. A chiseled narrative with both poetic and political power.

Publication date: August 28, 2025

About the author:

Kamel Daoud, born in Mostaganem, Algeria, in 1970, worked for a long time as a journalist for newspapers such as the Quotidien d'Oran and others. After being threatened for his critical articles in Algeria in 2014, Daoud went into exile in France and devoted himself to literature. He received critical acclaim for his first novel The Meursault Case - A Rebuttal, including the Prix Goncourt du Premier Roman. "Huris" is his new novel with which he won the Prix Goncourt.