Book premiere: Behzad Karim Kahni: When we were swans

After his acclaimed debut, "Dog Wolf Jackal," Behzad Karim Khani follows up with a second novel. A novel about a dreary country. About the diaspora as home. And about freedom in being a stranger. The boy in question longs for a violence that will leave a hollow with the outline of Germany.

He lives in a housing estate where the kitchens have no extractor fans and the hallways smell of poverty, marjoram and bunk beds. It is the 1990s and he and his family have fled from Iran to the Ruhr region. His mother is a sociologist, his father a writer whose language has fifteen different words for pride. He experiences Germany as an insult; he becomes an observer and exhausts himself trying to understand this country, while his mother believes in progress and progress. His son's anger, on the other hand, becomes more and more unbridled. There is a violence on the streets of his neighbourhood that his parents know little about.

Behzad Karim Khani was born in Tehran and grew up in a family of artists. He was not yet ten years old when he came to Germany with his parents and they settled in the Ruhr area. He has lived in Berlin-Kreuzberg since 2003. His debut novel Hund, Wolf, Schakal was published by Hanser Berlin in 2022.

The author in conversation with Senthuran Varatharajah

Admission: 6.30 p.m.

Start: 7 p.m.

Admission: Admission 8 € / reduced 5 € / Berlin-Ticket S 3 € [Advance booking via the Literaturhaus Berlin]