Leif Randt - „Let´s Talk About Feelings“ // Lesung auf dem Harbour Front Literaturfestival

In the organizer's words:

The Harbour Front Literature Festival is looking forward to welcoming Leif Randt - one of the most precise stylists in contemporary German literature. With ironic elegance, his novels tell of visions of the future, life plans and the shimmering vagueness between closeness and distance.

"Let's Talk About Feelings" is an optimistic book about sad farewells: Leif Randt invents the coming-of-middle-age.

"Leif Randt's work is quite unique in contemporary German literature: these pastel-colored irritations of prosperity, which he describes so precisely."

- Jörg Schieke, MDR Kultur

"No German author is so close to the present. You want to cry out, you feel so caught out."

- Ijoma Mangold, Die Zeit

About the book "Let's Talk About Feelings"

Marian Flanders, 41, sells perhaps the most beautiful clothes in the world in his West Berlin boutique, but the Kenting Beach store is rarely financially successful. When his mother Carolina - a once iconic model - passes away after a long illness, Marian organizes an alternative funeral service for selected guests. On his father's former party boat, he delivers a disarming speech, co-authored by his best friend, and scatters his mother's ashes on the Wannsee. Marian believes that this event marks the beginning of the more joyless half of his life. But what follows is a year of transformation. Successful half-siblings and ambivalent flirtations take Marian to places such as Plaza Konami, Sapporo, New Delhi and Wolfsburg. False friendliness turns into warm-hearted defiance, undercooled sadness grows into quiet euphoria - let's talk about feelings.

Publication date: September 04, 2025

About the author:

Leif Randt, born in Frankfurt am Main in 1983, lives in Maintal-Hochstadt and Berlin. With his novels "Shimmering Haze over CobyCounty" and "Planet Magnon" - included by Der Spiegel in the list of "50 Books of Our Time" - he became known early on as the literary voice of a hypermodern present. His breakthrough came in 2020 with the bestseller "Allegro Pastell", which has since been made into a movie. Randt has received numerous awards for his work, most recently the Hölderlin Prize from the city of Bad Homburg (2023). He is co-founder and co-curator of the online publishing label tegelmedia.net.