Lutz Seiler: *The Ticking Heart*—40th Freiburg Literary Discussion: Reading and Conversation with Christoph Schröder

Following his Robinsonade *Kruso*, which tells the story of shipwrecked survivors on Hiddensee during the GDR era, and his novel *Stern 111*, in which he captures the chaos of the post-reunification period, Lutz Seiler continues the story of his hero, Carl Bischoff. His new work, *Das tickende Herz* (Suhrkamp, 2026), begins with a small, non-healing wound caused by a kiss. A love for Aysha—the daughter of a Kazakh shaman—that is as fairy-tale-like and magical as it is dubious leads Carl, at the dawn of the new millennium, from Berlin to Amsterdam, Rotterdam, the Curonian Spit, the frigid winter steppe, and an old nuclear test site. There, Aysha’s clan has barricaded itself in to prepare a sacrifice to save the Earth—while Carl loses touch with the world.
Lutz Seiler, who found his way to prose through poetry, remains—even as a novelist—an eloquent poet with an unmistakable voice: “melancholic, haunting, sincere, full of wonderful echoes from a long literary tradition,” as stated in the citation for the 2023 Georg Büchner Prize. This year marks his fifth visit to the Freiburg Literary Forum
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Photo: Jürgen Bauer

Sponsors: City of Freiburg Department of Culture, Baden-Württemberg Ministry of Science, Research, and the Arts, Sparkasse Freiburg-Nördlicher Breisgau, Guzzoni-Federer Foundation, Deutsche Pfandbriefbank
Cooperation partners: Theater in the Marienbad, jos fritz bookstore
Cultural partner: SWR Kultur

Date:
Location: Historical Merchants' Hall, Münsterplatz 24
Admission: 11/7 euros / Combo ticket (includes reading with Nadja Küchenmeister): 20/10 euros

Literary discussion
Off-site