Zoorama

Zoorama– Novel: Reading and Discussion with Zaza Burchuladze
Moderated by Martin Jankowski
Narrator: Uwe Neumann

They say there’s an animal in all of us. But is there also a human in all of us?

A young Georgian family in the midst of Berlin’s gray winter. Exiles who must start a new life, yet are haunted by the past. And a high-rise that is hermetically sealed off, yet seems to harbor the entire mad world—fugitive generals, escaped zoo animals, and heaps of trash. There’s hardly any room left for the future. An intense novel about the loss and rediscovery of language, and the family as the last community in an inhospitable present. 

The father, a writer, is slowly losing his ability to speak. His daughter Stella, on the other hand, is constantly playing with words. Her mother, Marika, always has to find a solution to every problem. As they set off for a children’s birthday party on the other side of town, they encounter a second story set in an old high-rise from the Soviet era. Cut off from the outside world by electric fences and barred windows, the residents are visibly suffocating in their own trash. Fugitive generals and escaped zoo animals haunt the hallways, and for some time now, the children have been disappearing. Can humanity be saved, or will it wipe itself out? Why tell stories, what is there to hope for, if in the end all our creations only add to the waste? Zoorama is a literary quest for the means of survival in a world that has fallen apart. 

The event will be held in German and English (with translation)!