Literaturfest: »STIMMEN AUF ABSTAND« GABRIELA ADAMEȘTEANU, JAN KONEFFKE

In the organizer's words:

When the private becomes political and the political reaches into the most intimate areas of life: an evening about love and relationships in the shadow of authoritarian systems.

Gabriela Adameșteanu (*1942) is one of the most important voices in contemporary Romanian literature ("Das Provisorium der Liebe" and others) and her new novel will be published in German translation especially for the Munich Literature Festival. In "Stimmen auf Abstand" (Wallstein Verlag, Engl. by Jan Koneffke), she tells the story of Ava, a retired doctor, who remembers: husbands and children, happiness and unhappiness. She describes the upheavals of a society that has never really been able to come to terms with its authoritarian past and unfolds a panorama of collective repression, silent adaptation and lingering fear.

Gabriela Adameșteanu talks to her translator, the poet and author Jan Koneffke (most recently: "Im Schatten zweier Sommer", 2024), about intimate freedom in totalitarian systems - and about literature as a place of memory and self-empowerment.