tekst reading series: Lorena Simmel - "Ferymont" (Bremerhaven)
When she runs out of money for her studies in Berlin, the young first-person narrator travels to her home village of Ferymont in Switzerland to work as an agricultural assistant for a season. While working in the fields, she befriends Daria, who travels from Moldova with her family every year to earn money as a seasonal worker on farms in the Swiss Lake District. The closeness that develops between the two young women also brings the imbalance between the Western and Eastern European regions into focus.
"Ferymont" is a literary portrait of a region in the heart of Europe that addresses an often invisible reality. A quiet novel that questions capitalist working conditions with linguistic virtuosity and sensitively focuses on the stories of seasonal workers.
Lorena Simmel received the Robert Walser Prize for her debut novel in 2024.
"Without trivializing the conditions in the fields, Lorena Simmel succeeds in making the lives of seasonal workers tangible beyond the negative headlines in "Ferymont". She portrays the various characters with great attention to the small, seemingly inconspicuous details that ultimately reveal quite a lot about a person. A touching and important debut." Livia Praun / FM4
"The world that Lorena Simmel describes in "Ferymont" seems frighteningly surreal. One imagines oneself in another time or on another continent, where the exploitation of workers is the order of the day: it's shameful how cleverly we hide the fact that people here also work to the point of exhaustion for a pittance." Bettina Gugger / Anzeiger Bern
[Photo: Nane Diehl]
Location
Forum of the Chamber of Employees in Bremerhaven
Barkhausenstraße 16
27568 Bremerhaven
Price information:
Price reduction available with a valid ChamberCard