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Writers: Konrad Bogusław Bach (Guben) and Dana von Suffrin (Munich)
Moderator: Rainer Moritz (Hamburg)

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Moderator of live stream comments: Veronika Trubel (Vienna)
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Otto, the eponymous hero of Dana von Suffrin’s debut novel, is a retired engineer, a Jew from Transylvania. The novel begins and ends in the intensive care unit. His two daughters are called to the bedside. With black humour the novel tells of the effort to remember and, in the Yiddish tradition of storytelling, to resurrect the life story of the patriarch and, so too, the abysses of the twentieth century.

The tragedies of a century and striving to put this into words – what function does comedy, the comedian and the fantastical have in this process?

Two men, who are about to start their retirement, set off from a small village in Poland on a journey to the west. They follow the A2, the “highway of freedom”, bound for the Netherlands. After an accident on a game crossing, they are left stranded in Germany. Now there author Konrad Bogusław Bach begins an absurd odyssey through loathsome Europe. They encounter a bison and the abysses of their own past.

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