Junge Debüts: Leon Engler, Maya Rosa & Ozan Zakariya Keskinkiliç

In the organizer's words:

Three first novels in one evening.

The narrator in Leon Engler's Botany of Madness looks back on his family tree: grandmother bipolar, twelve suicide attempts, mother alcoholic, father depressive. A debut like a stroke of liberation, a story of reconciliation, a lesson in empathy.

In Moscow Mule by Maya Rosa, Karina and Tonya share everything - their studies at a Moscow university, drunken men, empty wallets, but above all: the ambitious goal of emigrating to Europe. A text that skillfully interweaves the political with the urge for freedom of growing up and impresses with its special wit and cleverness.

Hundesohn by Ozan Zakariya Keskinkiliç tells the story of Zeko, who lives in Berlin and meets men in parks and cafés, on dating apps and in front of the mosque. But every time he does, his thoughts are drawn back to Hassan, the boy next door in Adana, three thousand kilometers away. A radical and poetic tale of love and desire, of soft cries and loud whispers.

These three young authors present their fiction debuts and talk about them with Lisa Kreißler: About writing, about writing novels and about their very own, but perhaps also common themes.

Leon Engler has published numerous plays, radio plays and short stories and was awarded the 3sat Prize at the Bachmann Competition in 2022. Botanik des Wahnsinns is his first novel.

Maya Rosa is an author and translator of German, French and Russian. Moscow Mule is her first novel and she lives in Berlin.

Ozan Zakariya Keskinkiliç is a political scientist, freelance author and poet. Hundesohn is his first novel, following a volume of poetry in 2022.