Ronya Othmann: Vierundsiebzig - Reading and talk in the Ins Freie series

"I have seen. The ego is a witness. It speaks, and yet it has no language." In her novel "Vierundsiebzig" (Rowohlt, 2024), Ronya Othmann seeks words for the unspeakable, a form to tell of the genocide of the Ezidi population by IS, which is remembered as "Ferman 74". The narrator's search takes her to the crime scenes and front lines, to survivors in refugee camps, to relatives' living rooms and to an Ezidi village in Turkey where no one lives today. Looking, listening, bearing witness. Collecting pictures, reports, stories. Creating a connection to her own history, to life in the diaspora, as a journalist and author in Germany. Ronya Othmann's sentences are clear and forceful - and yet they constantly question themselves: "Speechlessness still lies beneath the language, even when there is a text." The author talks to her colleague Ivna Zic about this impressive search for truth, identity and words.
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Photo: © Paula Winkler

An event of the Literatursommer 2024 of the Baden-Württemberg-Stiftung, www.literatursommer.de, with the kind support of INTA-Stiftung and Förderkreis Literaturhaus Freiburg e.V.

Co-organizer: Amica e.V.

Date: 16.5.2024, 19:30
Venue: Literaturhaus Freiburg, Bertoldstraße 17
Admission: 9/6 euros

Ins Freie
Literaturhaus