Jegana Dschabbarowa im Gespräch mit Olga Grjasnowa

In the organizer's words:

Jegana Dschabbarowa in conversation with Olga Grjasnowa about her debut "The hands of the women in my family were not meant for writing"

A woman talks about her body. Through her eyebrows, eyes, hair, mouth, shoulders, hands, back, legs and stomach, it becomes clear that the female body has always been a field for exercising power: "Since early childhood, my sister and I knew that every self-respecting girl had to have very, very long hair - hair that could easily conceal the contours of a growing, changing body." The nameless first-person narrator in the slim and powerful novel "The hands of the women in my family were not meant for writing" (Zsolnay; translation: Maria Rajer) suffers from an illness that helps her achieve freedom. As an outsider, she is no longer bound by the traditional body images and archaic behaviors that her patriarchal culture of origin still uses to define women's lives.

The poet, essayist and doctor of literature Jegana Dschabbarowa was born in 1992 in Yekaterinburg, Russia, into an Azerbaijani family. She was severely threatened in Russia because of her origins, her writings and her way of life. She fled to Hamburg in 2024. The author, who calls Ursula K. Le Guin, Audre Lorde and Marina Tsvetaeva her "literary grandmothers", writes poetic, pulsating prose of clear precision. We look forward to hearing this strong new voice.

German reading and interpretation: Henrike Schmidt

Price information:

€ 16,-/12,- / 6,- Livestream