Reading by Roman Ehrlich
Heinrich Böll Memorial Arts Festival
Roman Ehrlich will be reading from his novel Malé as part of the Heinrich Böll Memorial Arts Weekend.
All attempts to save the Maldives from rising sea levels have failed. Package tourists have sought new destinations, and most of the population has had to leave the islands. At the same time, the run-down capital Malé has become the destination of all those looking for an alternative to living in the gentrified cities of the West. And so, for the short time until its demise, the island becomes a projection screen for dropouts, adventurers and utopians, a place between euphoria and nightmare, where new forms of solidarity are tested and people disappear untraceably. With Malé, Roman Ehrlich captures the complex mood of our time and weaves the stories around the longings and failures of his characters into a reflection of all the contradictions that make up life at the beginning of the 21st century.
Roman Ehrlich, born 1983, studied creative writing in Leipzig and contemporary German literature in Berlin. He mainly publishes novels and short prose. In 2015, he also began a collaboration with visual artist Michael Disqué for a series of photo-text-essays. His latest publications include the novel Malé (2020) and Überfahrt (Crossing, with M. Disqué, 2020, Spector Books). Roman Ehrlich received several prizes and scholarships for his work, most recently the Kunstpreis Berlin for literature in March 2022.