The author will present his novel "Birobidschan" as part of our new series “Vorzeichen”.
On 23 April, Tomer Dotan-Dreyfus will talk about his novel
Birobidschan. Participation is free and open to anyone interested in German-language literature. The discussion will be led by Dr Maha El Hissy who is an independent literary scholar and critic. Dr El Hissy is curating the series
Vorzeichen: Whom, What, and How We Read on behalf of the Goethe-Institut Northwestern Europe region. The conversation will be held in German and broadcast on Zoom. A recording will be made available on the
Vorzeichen website after the event.
BIROBIDSCHAN
© Goethe-Institut Dänemark/ Nanke Nicolaisen
"Yeah, it's a strange kind of place we've got here, isn't it? Hardly real, you could say, hardly a place." Birobidschan is the name of this "hardly a place". It is located in eastern Russia, beyond Siberia, close to the Chinese border, and in Tomer Dotan-Dreyfus' novel it refers to a fabulist story about a Jewish-Socialist utopia. Everything is business as usual there until several incidents shatter the idyllic picture. A bear appears. Shots are fired. Bodies are found. The narrator intervenes and makes his presence felt - sometimes tired, sometimes bored or overly preoccupied. Two strange men and a mute girl enter the plot, which then only becomes even more sinister and mysterious.
The series Vorzeichen: Whom, What and How We Read presents a reading and discussion with Tomer Dotan-Dreyfus. In his book of essays Meine Forschung zum O: Unlearning Sprache, the author conducts fictional dialogues with Hölderlin, Peter Szondi, Jaques Derrida, Paul Celan, Anna O, the Marquise of O, among others, presenting the sign "O" in a new light.
Quote
Do you sometimes have the feeling as if you, as if your life were the dream of another person?
(From Birobidschan by Tomer Dotan-Dreyfus, Voland & Quist, 2023)
Tomer Dotan-Dreyfus
Tomer Dotan-Dreyfus was born in Haifa and is now a freelance author, poet and translator in Berlin. He writes in both Hebrew and German.
For his work on
Birobidschan, he received a one-year scholarship from the Berlin Senate in 2020 and was selected for the Jewish Writers in Translation 2021 programme of Jewish Book Week in London. In September 2021, he was a guest at the Meridian Czernowitz International Poetry Festival in Ukraine. His book of essays
My Research on the O: Unlearning Sprache was published by Gans Verlag Berlin in 2022.
Birobidschan was published in 2023 and was nominated for the German Book Prize 2023.
#Vorzeichen
The online reading and discussion with Tomer Dotan-Dreyfus is the second in the series #Vorzeichen [Accidental Portents]: Whom, What, and How We Read. The series sheds light on the plurality of voices, forms of writing, and aesthetics that emerge outside hegemonic canonisation structures. It critically examines the literary canon and emphasises the importance of reading as a means of critiquing power structures. The project is curated by Maha El Hissy, independent literary scholar and critic. In 2012 Dr El Hissy‘s Getürkte Türken. Karnevaleske Stilmittel im Theater, Kabarett und Film deutsch-türkischer Künstlerinnen und Künstler (transcript Verlag) was published. She has taught modern German literature in Cairo, Munich and London. As a critic, Dr El Hissy writes for the Berliner Zeitung, taz and Deutschlandfunk Kultur. She will soon be publishing an anthology on the art and literature of immigration to post-war Germany with Verbrecher Verlag.
Back
