Nava Ebrahimi »Und Federn überall«

In the organizer's words:

January 20, 2026 / 7.30 pm / Literature Café

Nava Ebrahimi "And feathers everywhere"

Fog lies over the fields and the canal. It's as if winter doesn't want to end in the small town of Lasseren in Emsland. There's not much going on here in the flat countryside, year in, year out. Anyone looking for work cannot avoid Möllring, the huge poultry slaughterhouse on the outskirts of the town. For a handful of people, this Monday morning begins with great expectations. Sonia, a single mother, is hoping for a job far away from the chicken-cutting assembly line. For the young engineer Anna, everything is at stake with the test run of a new automation process at Möllring. Merkhausen, on the other hand, an abandoned husband with a soft spot for Polish women and responsible for process optimization in the slaughterhouse, is eagerly awaiting a date in the evening. And then there is the refugee Afghan Nassim, who is involved in an affair with Justyna, twenty years his senior, and firmly believes that his poems will soften the German officials. Roshi, a German-Iranian author, has traveled all the way from Cologne to translate them. When a reckless cyclist breaks the visually impaired man's cane in the middle of town, Nassim not only becomes a local celebrity with the help of the local radio station. He also makes people face their own truth.

Ingeborg Bachmann Prize winner Nava Ebrahimi immerses herself in the life of a small town in Emsland and weaves the stories of six people into a gripping social novel about the question: How do we stay human when life gets harder and harder? (Luchterhand 2025)

Nava Ebrahimi, born in Tehran in 1978, is one of the most important voices in German-language literature. She has received several awards for "Sechzehn Wörter". She studied journalism and economics in Cologne and worked as an editor for the Financial Times Deutschland and the Kölner Stadtrevue. She has been a regular columnist for the Süddeutsche Zeitung since 2025. Nava Ebrahimi lives with her family in Graz.

Admission: 10,- / 7,- EUR

Event organized by Literaturhaus Leipzig e.V.