Join us for an special book reading session with Kenyan Author Peter Kimani and German Author Andreas Baum.
About the Authors
Andreas Baum, born in 1967, grew up in Nairobi and Hesse, in Germany. He studied journalism and Latin-American Studies in Berlin and has written as a journalist for German newspapers, such as taz, Freitag, Lettre International, Deutschlandfunk, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, and Frankfurter Rundschau. Since 2013, he is the culture editor and an author at Deutschlandradio Kultur. Wir waren die neue Zeit (We were the new era) is his first novel. He is currently working on a collection of short stories and another novel. He has received writing grants from two German cultural organisations
Book:
Wir waren die neue Zeit/WE WERE THE NEW ERA
Berlin in 1990: The Berlin Wall is crumbling, and an enchanted country suddenly becomes freely accessible. But the magic soon evaporates. Even the group of young people squatting in the late 19th century house in the Badstübnerstraße notice the change. While they manage to defend their squat against the police, neo-Nazis and competing squatter groups, relationships amongst the squatters are anything but amicable. The narrator, Sebastian Brandt, is right in the middle of events, yet cannot help noticing that the high-minded political opinions and ideological slogans often mask unadulterated self-interest. Who’s getting the biggest apartment? Who’s having the best sex? And the only question that’s more important than that is: Who is the informer?
https://www.rowohlt.de/catalogue/taschenbuch/andreas-baum-wir-waren-die-neue-zeit.html
Peter Kimani is an award-winning Kenyan author and journalist. He works across a broad spectrum of genres, from fiction to non-fiction, poetry and plays. His latest novel, Dance of the Jakaranda, was published in New York in February 2017, to great critical acclaim. It is a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and a 2018 nominee for Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Fiction, which honours the best writing from Black America and abroad.
His poetry appears in several anthologies. He was one of only three international poets commissioned by National Public Radio to compose and recite a poem to mark Barack Obama’s inauguration in January 2009.
Kimani received his formal education in Kenya, the United Kingdom and the United States, where he earned a doctorate in Creative Writing and Literature from the University of Houston in 2014.
Peter Kimani’s book, Dance of the Jakaranda, is a historical novel that re-imagines the rise and fall of colonialism in Kenya at the turn of the last century. http://www.petekimani.co.ke/dance-of-the-jakaranda.html
Admission: free
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Creative Writing Workshop:
Wed 27.02.2019 9am – 5pm
Please send in a short paragraph or poem (100 words max) by Friday 22.02., 9am to elizabeth.wichenje@goethe.de
Your submission: A work of creativity with a political and/or historical background.
You shall receive a confirmation by Monday 25.02.2019
Only 25 slots available
The workshop is free of charge.
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