Yavuz Ekinci: Das ferne Dorf meiner Kindheit

In the organizer's words:

A great family novel that spans almost a century, reflects the violent history of a country torn apart and tells of two peoples who are robbed of their origins, their language and everything that makes them human.

Rüstem grows up in a small village in the mountains. His mother died giving birth to him and he lives with his father and older siblings in his grandparents' house. There are constant arguments between his father and grandfather, and the relationship between his grandparents is also strained. However, they are Rüstem's most important caregivers in an archaic world characterized by patriarchal structures, religious rites, superstition, violence and a political conflict that only gradually becomes clear to the boy: His eldest brother has gone to the mountains, soldiers keep searching the family home and he is forbidden to speak his native Kurdish at school. When his grandmother is dying, Rüstem discovers a family secret that takes him back many decades to a time when Armenian families still lived in the long-decaying neighboring village. Together with his father, Rüstem sets off there to fulfill his grandmother's last wish.

Yavuz Ekinci, born in Batman in 1979, works as a teacher and is the editor of a series on Kurdish literature in exile. Ekinci has received numerous prizes for his prose work, including the Haldun Taner Prize in 2005. His most recent novels are "The Day a Man Came from Mount Amar" (2017) and "The Prophet's Tears" (2019). Ekinci lives in Istanbul.

Moderation: Gerrit Wustmann
Interpreter: Çiler Fırtına

As part of the LiteraturAufRuhr® 2024.
An event in cooperation with the Multikulturelles Forum e.V.