Lesung Karina Papp mit »Zungenbrecher«

Tickets are available for 3-5 at the Box Office. All proceeds go to the author.

In her extraordinary debut "Zungenbrecher", Karina Papp tells the story of Kiera, a young woman who moves from St. Petersburg to Berlin to build a new life and study. She is distracted by tedious part-time jobs, an expectant mother and her attractive professor. To keep up with her studies, she forms a language tandem with Simon. A short time later, the two are a couple and spend their time translating poetry. While Kiera struggles to find words and clarity for her life, Simon plans their future together. But then Kiera meets the engaging activist Nadia, for whose attention she tears down her boundaries.

Kiera loses herself between the challenges of being a migrant in Germany, the expectations of her parents in Russia, fears for the future and the beguiling (re)discovery of her queerness. In her attempt to break free, she is accompanied by the first-person narrator, for whom Kiera's struggles are already in the past. Calm and sharp-eyed, she calls out to Kiera and the reader with encouragement and queerfeminist reading recommendations.
The book uniquely weaves together three languages - Russian, English and German - to create a poetic narrative about identity, resistance and the search for beauty in a fracturing world. It is a work about love, desire and belonging that touches gently and painfully at the same time.

Karina Papp is an author and translator born in 1988 in what is now Latvia. She studied journalism and literature in Russia. She has lived in Berlin since 2013. In her search for interlingual and politically conscious literary forms, Karina combines writing with translation. She is the recipient of several DÜF Radial scholarships for translators. Her texts have been published in the literary journals Neznanie, m ZIN and Soft Eis Magazine. "Zungenbrecher" is her first novel.