Verlassene Nester - Podiumsgespräch

In the organizer's words:

Author Patricia Hempel and Knut Elstermann in conversation at the Urania Berlin

"Abandoned Nests" is perhaps the best novel about the fall of communism that is not a novel about the fall of communism at all. It is a great art of telling the disorientation of this time quite casually in the story of the disorientation of a teenager who falls in love with his best friend. Knut Elstermann talks to author Patricia Hempel about her coming-of-age novel, which has just been named Book of the Month for September by NDR Kultur.

The year is 1992 in a fictitious planned town in the border region on the Elbe. Above all, however, it is the summer in the life of thirteen-year-old Pilly, when she falls in love for the first time and fights for the attention of the slightly older Katja. A summer in which she is searching, but finds no direction in her surroundings. Her father spends most of his time at the village inn, her mother is supposedly in the West, her aunts risk their livelihoods to get quick money. One afternoon, the gardens of the Vietnamese contract workers are on fire and a woman appears, claiming to be her mother.

Patricia Hempel, born in Berlin in 1983, studied literary writing in Hildesheim. She is a member of the editorial board of the queer literary magazine GLITTER and a founding member of PEN Berlin. Her novel "Verlassene Nester" was awarded a scholarship by the Berlin Senate and nominated for the Alfred Döblin Prize 2023.

Price information:

Admission: 8 €, reduced: 5 €, members: 3 €