Readings & conversations
Borderless Mountains

Norbert Gstrein: Alpine Literature meets the Rockies

Sat, 10/28/2017
7:30 PM Margaret Greenham Theatre

Presented by the Goethe-Institut, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, and Toronto's International Festival of Authors

How does a chosen literary setting affect story, characters, voice? European and North American authors read from their “mountain” works and discuss how region and home define their writing. The Goethe-Institut & Banff Centre invite award-winning German-language author for his Canadian debut to read from his works in translation and discuss with local colleagues what mountain culture means to them.

Program:

Saturday, October 28, 7:30pm
Norbert Gstrein and Berlin-based author Julia Franck will be in conversation. Julia Franck's participation is made possible by The Coalition of Women in Germany.

Norbert Gstrein was born in 1961 in the Tyrolean Alps and studied mathematics in Innsbruck and at Stanford. At the 1989 Ingeborg Bachmann Festival, he won the Kärnten Prize for his work “The Jungle. A Prologue”. He is the author of several highly acclaimed novels, among them “The English Years” (1999), which won widespread critical acclaim in Germany and was awarded the coveted Alfred Döblin Prize. W.G. Sebald described it as “an exceptional work of prose fiction”. Other works include “A Sense of the Beginning” (2013). He is currently finishing his latest book, which begins and ends with Canada, out January 2018, from which he will read on his Canadian tour. With his novels, Norbert Gstrein has established himself as "one of the foremost raconteurs not only in the German-speaking world, but European literature as a whole" (FAZ). He lives with his family in Hamburg, Germany.

Julia Franck is a German writer based in Berlin. She studied German Literature and American Studies at the Free University of Berlin. She worked as an editor for Sender Freies Berlin and contributed to various newspapers and magazines. She is known for her books "The Blindness of the Heart" (2010) and "Back to Back (2013)". Francks books have been translated over 35 languages. "West" (2014) is a film adaptation of her novel "Lagerfeuer".

Curated by Jutta Brendemühl & Devyani Saltzmann