Book Club Meeting
Maxim Biller: Six Suitcases
Join us online for a discussion of the novel “Six Suitcases” by Maxim Biller. New members welcome!
Every family has its secrets and rumours which are carried from generation to generation. Sometimes they are a matter of life and death. In his novel Maxim Biller tells of one such secret in his own family and of the dark impact it has on the present.
When the patriarch in a Russian-Jewish émigré family is executed in the midst of the Cold War, family loyalties are put to the test when his entire family falls under suspicion. The novel switches between Prague, Zurich, Moscow and Hamburg, incorporating the perspectives of six different relatives as they navigate the web of secrets and lies that binds them together, struggling to reconcile themselves to the turbulent events within their family circle. This literary tour de force interweaves tales of the Soviet secret service, the history of Czech post-war cinema, and accounts of Communist anti-Semitism. At the same time, it is also a story about the here and now, about our fragmented modern world in which one’s place of birth and one’s home are seldomly the same thing anymore.
Maxim Biller was born in Prague in 1960, and emigrated with his family to Germany in 1970. He is the author of »Der gebrauchte Jude« (2009), »Im Kopf von Bruno Schulz« (2013), »Biografie« (2016) and most recently „Sieben Versuche zu lieben. Familiengeschichten“ (2020). His books have been translated into sixteen different languages. His bestselling novel “Sechs Koffer” was shortlisted for the German Book Prize in 2018.
Please register on Eventbrite.
Further information and a link to our meeting space on Zoom will be provided by our library team.
library-glasgow@goethe.de
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