Goethe-Institut Montreal
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Book Club: Ellbogen
Our German book club continues this winter. We’d like to invite you to read the novel “Ellbogen” by Fatma Aydemir and to join us for a discussion in German.
About the novel :
Between Germany and Turkey – a young woman searches for a home. A warm-hearted and fierce debut novel by Fatma Aydemir.
She is seventeen. She was born in Berlin. Her name is Hazal Akgündüz. She could actually become an ordinary adult. Except that her parents, who immigrated from Turkey, feel like strangers in Germany. And that Hazal makes fatal mistakes in her search for a home. First it’s just a stolen lipstick. Then blunt force. When the police come after her, Hazal flees to Istanbul, where she has never been before. Warm-hearted and fierce, Fatma Aydemir tells of the many people who live between cultures and nations, and of their search for a place in the world. You want to help Hazal, you want to run through the night with her, you want to know what will happen to her and to all of us. (hanser-literaturverlage.de)
About the author:
Fatma Aydemir was born in Karlsruhe in 1986 and lives in Berlin. Her debut novel “Ellbogen” was published by Hanser in 2017, for which she received the Klaus Michael Kühne Prize and the Franz Hessel Prize. In 2019, she edited the anthology “Eure Heimat ist unser Albtraum” together with Hengameh Yaghoobifarah. Her second novel “Dschinns” (Hanser, 2022) was awarded the Robert Gernhardt Prize and the LiteraTour Nord Prize 2023. (hanser-literaturverlage.de)
About our moderator:
Sebastian Döderlein studied French, history and German as a foreign language in Cologne and Bonn and then received his doctorate from Concordia University Montreal with a thesis on the end of the First World War in the German-French border region. He has been Professor of German Language and Culture at the Université du Québec à Montréal since 2021.
In his free time, he enjoys reading historical novels and short stories that deal with the many facets of German society.
A few copies (ebook) are available in our digital library, Onleihe. (Find here how to register to Onleihe.)