Russische Spezialitäten - Lesung mit Dmitrij Kapitelman

In the organizer's words:

"Since the war, I don't know what language actually is. ... I carry a language inside me like a crime and yet I love it, despite all my guilt."
In his new novel, Dmitrij Kapitelman writes about family and the (im)possibility of understanding in times of old and new wars in a deeply political way: a family from Kyiv sells "Russian" specialties in Leipzig. Vodka, pelmeni, SIM cards, sailor shirts - and an Eastern European "sense of togetherness". But the latter is no longer available since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The mother is on Putin's side. And her son, who loves no language more than Russian, no person more than his mother, but also no city more than Kyiv, despairs at this situation. It is not wise of him to return to Ukraine in the middle of the war. But what should he do if there is no other way to get his mother back from fascism and the Russian television lies?

Dmitrij Kapitelman, born in Kyiv in 1986, came to Germany with his family as a "contingent refugee" at the age of eight. He studied political science and sociology at the University of Leipzig and graduated from the German School of Journalism in Munich. Today he works as a freelance journalist. His first, successful book "Das Lächeln meines unsichtbaren Vaters" (My Invisible Father's Smile) was published in 2016, for which he won the Klaus-Michael Kühne Prize. This was followed in 2021 by "A Formality in Kiev", for which he was awarded the Ravensburger Verlag Foundation's Family Novel Book Prize.

In his new novel, Dmitrij Kapitelman writes in a deeply political way about family and the (im)possibility of understanding in times of old and new wars: a family from Kyiv sells Russian specialties in Leipzig. Vodka, pelmeni, SIM cards, sailor shirts - and an Eastern European "sense of togetherness". But the latter is no longer available since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The mother is on Putin's side. And her son, who loves no language more than Russian, no person more than his mother, but also no city more than Kyiv, despairs at this situation. It is not wise of him to return to Ukraine in the middle of the war. But what should he do if there is no other way to get his mother back from fascism and the Russian television lies? Dmitrij Kapitelman, born in Kyiv in 1986, came to Germany with his family as a "contingent refugee" at the age of eight. He studied political science and sociology at the University of Leipzig and graduated from the German School of Journalism in Munich. Today he works as a freelance journalist. His first book "Das Lächeln meines unsichtbaren Vaters" (The Smile of My Invisible Father) was published in 2016 and won the Klaus-Michael Kühne Prize. This was followed in 2021 by "Eine Formalie in Kiew", for which he was awarded the Ravensburger Verlag Foundation's Family Novel Book Prize.

Price information:

15€ / reduced 8€ / cultural semester ticket free of charge