Die Verwilderung - Romanpremiere mit Martin Lechner

In the organizer's words:

"Where did they put a horror girl like me? To the hospital? To the loony bin? In jail? Or straight into a cage? In some animal testing cellar? But I hadn't done anything! To no one! Nothing! Nothing at all!"

Marlies is not to be envied: She is supposed to spend the summer before her A-levels with her confused grandmother in order to talk her out of inheriting the house. For a while now, she's been noticing a strange swelling on her left hand that won't go away. What begins as a coming-of-age story turns into a tragicomic novel about fear, shame and self-empowerment. For when Marlies sees a claw growing out of her finger, which soon develops an uncanny life of its own, a frantic search for salvation begins.

Martin Lechner, born in 1974, lives in Berlin. He published the novels "Kleine Kassa", which was longlisted for the 2014 German Book Prize, and "Der Irrweg" (2021) as well as the short story collection "Nach fünfhundertzwanzig Weltmeertagen". In 2024, he received the Dr. Hedwig Meyn Prize from the city of Lüneburg. "Die Verwilderung" is his third novel.

Thorsten Dönges was born in Giessen in 1974 and studied German literature and history in Bamberg. He has worked at the Literary Colloquium Berlin (LCB) since 2003, where he is responsible for curating contemporary German-language literature and heads the renowned "Autor*innenwerkstatt Prosa". As an editor, he helps shape the LCB's in-house magazine "Sprache im Technischen Zeitalter". He is a moderator at the International Literature Festival Leukerbad (CH) and the European Festival of the Debut Novel (Kiel) as well as a member of the jury for the Franz Hessel Prize.