Norbert Gstrein »Im ersten Licht«

March 12, 2026 / 7.30 pm / Literature Café

Norbert Gstrein gives us an entire human life. Yet every life is fragile in this novel, which begins with a blow from an axe: Adrian's father makes him unfit for the First World War as a teenager, perhaps saving him in the process. The stubborn, tender man who limps through more than eighty years of life from then on is the wonder of this story. Adrian twice sees his world come to an end, twice has to deal with young men who were less fortunate than him, and in his old age experiences the unexpected love story of a man who was brought up to do everything but love. How to live in the shadow of war and killing? With a fearless look into the past, "Im ersten Licht" confronts this big question of the present. (Hanser 2026)

Norbert Gstrein, born in Tyrol in 1961, lives in Hamburg. He has received the Alfred Döblin Prize, the Literature Prize of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, the Uwe Johnson Prize, the Austrian Book Prize 2019, the Düsseldorf Literature Prize and the Thomas Mann Prize, among others. Hanser most recently published "Der zweite Jakob" (2021), with which he was nominated for the German Book Prize, as well as "Vier Tage, drei Nächte" (2022) and "Mehr als nur ein Fremder" (2023).

Admission: 10,- / 7,- EUR ǀ Event organized by Literaturhaus Leipzig e.V.