PREMIERENLESUNG / Bettina Pohlmann – Paula in Paris

In the organizer's words:

"A novel for anyone who wants to go back to the 80s, when they were on their way to the nearest phone booth with The Cure or Kate Bush in their Walkman headphones."

The novel
Absent-minded Paula has just turned twenty, graduated from high school in a stuffy Hamburg suburb and is about to embark on the first big change of her life: a year in Paris as an au pair! This is not only a chance to leave her conformist suburban life and her colorless boyfriend Thomas behind, but also allows her to postpone the big questions about her own future. She got the idea, as well as her first name, from her favorite grandmother, who swapped work for education in the French capital for a year back in 1912. Her deceased grandmother becomes Paula's spiritual companion, her guide and guardian angel. With little luggage and great excitement, Paula gets off the train at Gare du Nord and immerses herself in her new, foreign life.

But Paris doesn't make it easy for Paula. The city shocks her with its gray, forbidding facades, the endless metro corridors, the roaring traffic and the constantly
people hurrying around. Her host family turns out to be exploitative and differences are inevitable. Their everyday French has nothing in common with the French they learned at school.
The only salvation is the language course, where Paula makes her first friendship with the lively Canadian Moira.

In the Métro, Paula meets student Vincent by chance, who shows her the most beautiful corners of the city and gives her an insight into French society: His father came to Paris from Beirut, and Vincent is increasingly confronted with what it means to be a beur, a Frenchman with Arab roots.
Together with Moira, Paula discovers her own Paris, gets to know the good and inevitably also the bad sides.

When the first disco night almost ends in a rape, Paula is thrown out of her family shortly afterwards and the first bomb attacks are carried out by Hezbollah,
Paula is faced with a decision: should she give up and return to Germany, or find a new place to stay and try to become une vraie Parisienne?
Parisienne.

The author
Bettina Pohlmann spent two years in Paris before returning to her native Hamburg. There, as a reporter for NDR2, she reported on storm surges, stargazers, stadiums and presented a morning news program. After switching to television, she worked as a domestic correspondent for the ZDF regional studio and NDR television. For several years, she has been making reports and documentaries for public television as a filmmaker and author. Bettina Pohlmann lives with her family in Hamburg.

Price information:

ADMISSION: 10 EUR / REDUCED 7 EUR