Jehona Kicaj »ë«

In the organizer's words:

January 15, 2026 / 7.30 pm / Literature Café

Jehona Kicaj "ë"

The unusual title "ë" stands for a letter that has an important function in the Albanian language, although it is usually not pronounced at all. As the child of refugees from Kosovo, the narrator is in search of a language and a voice. She grows up in Germany, goes to kindergarten, school and university, searches for understanding, but repeatedly encounters attributions, cluelessness and ignorance.

When the Kosovo war raged at the end of the 1990s, she experienced it from a safe distance. But war and death are also present in the diaspora - they are just experienced differently than on the ground. The novel "ë" tells of the Kosovo war, which is hardly known in Germany, and recalls the suffering of families who lost their homeland, whose murdered relatives were buried anonymously and are still missing or unidentified today. A past that cannot pass because it is literally in every fiber of the body is brought up by Jehona Kicaj in the truest sense of the word.

Jehona Kicaj, born in Kosovo in 1991 and raised in Göttingen, studied Philosophy, German Studies and Modern German Literature in Hanover. After academic publications, she has also been publishing literary texts since 2020. She is co-editor of the anthology "'Und so blieb man eben für immer'. Guest workers and their children" (2023). Her debut novel "ë" was shortlisted for the German Book Prize 2025.

Admission: 10,- / 7,- EUR

Event organized by the Literaturhaus Leipzig e.V.