Jonas Lüscher: Enchanted predestination - reading and discussion with Florian Kessler

An Algerian soldier is caught up in the first German poison gas attack, decides someone has to stop now, gets up and leaves. In the Cairo of the future, a stand-up comedian watches an android laugh at her jokes. A Bohemian weaver is replaced by an automated loom, steals a hammer and attacks the machine. What do we humans dream of in capitalism? What about the machines that are increasingly rising up against us?

In the mirror room of Jonas Lüscher's new novel, they come into ever more astonishing contact with each other. Like a flash of inspiration, "Enchanted Predestination" (Hanser, 2025) sheds light on the hopes of our ending modernity and the technologies we are constructing. Smart and insane, funny and sharp, Lüscher tells of a present that would like to know more about the future. His novella "Spring of the Barbarians" was a bestseller, and he received the Swiss Book Prize for his novel "Kraft". His editor Florian Kessler talks to the author.
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Photo: © Peter-Andreas Hassiepen

The event is sponsored by the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia.

Date: 13.3.2025, 19:30
Location: Literaturhaus Freiburg, Bertoldstraße 17
Admission: 11/7 euros

Reading and discussion
Literaturhaus