Ricarda Messner reads "Where the name lives"

In her award-winning debut novel "Where the Name Lives", Ricarda Messner unfolds a family story whose hidden center only gradually becomes visible. A finely composed and multi-layered book written from the perspective of someone who was born later. House numbers 36 and 37, here in Berlin they lived in close proximity to each other for years. As a child, her granddaughter played table tennis on the glass table in her grandparents' living room. As an adult, she finally cleared out their apartment and moved cutlery, pots and pans and music cassettes next door. And she wants to preserve something else: Levitanus, the family name. The desire to take the name back not only accompanies her in everyday life, but also takes her to Riga. She follows the words of her great-grandfather Salomon and finds a window in the former Riga ghetto that is closely linked to her family history - and she traces the movements of four generations, from Soviet Latvia in the 1970s to Germany. Franz-Tumler Literature Prize 2025 (shortlist) Fulda Literature Prize 2025 Ricarda Messner, born in 1989, is co-founder and editor of Flaneur Magazine, which is dedicated to one street in a different city per issue and has won several awards. Wo der Name wohnt is her debut novel, for which she received the Alfred Döblin Scholarship. She lives and works in Berlin.