Time to Listen

To kick off the second phase of our digital project “Time to listen” curator Thomas Böhm and Wiebke Porombka look back at what happened so far and give a first glimpse at the upcoming themes.

A meeting full of intimacy. Full of devotion. A crossing of boundaries. A dance in the light of "the fatality that characterises the time in which we live".

In whose voice do authors write? What do the words mean? What does it mean to have a "voice of your own" as a writer? Aris Fioretos, son of an Austrian mother and a Greek father, raised in Sweden, tells how he found his voice - while splitting his voice from his image.

When Pao-Chang Tsai visits friends in Thessaloniki in the summer of 2009, he is overwhelmed by their hospitality and joy of life. He himself had been brought up by his father to be restrained, to be absolutely humble. Never to owe anyone a favour.
However, the mother of his hostess surprised him with a very special gesture.

In 1968 a survivor of the atomic bombing visits the German city of Hanover together with a delegation. At a bus stop a conversation takes place with a man who withdraws his outstretched hand when he finds out where the visitor comes from - for fear of radioactive radiation.
When the mayor of Hanover hears this, he takes the initiative.

The Spoken Word Poet Teardrops tells the story of the acquaintance with a woman he fell in love with. He saved money to visit her in Mombasa, but she did not show up for days. At the decisive moment, she sent him a message.

Actually, Edwige Renée Dro wanted to submit a factual text to this project. But unpredictable as these times are, she had another inspiration - and tells a story about an object playing the leading role, which probably only few would call "God".

Véronique Tadjo reads a chapter from her novel "The Whispering Tree", about the Ebola epidemic in West Africa in 2014. A young man, whose fiancée has been infected with the Ebola virus, remembers their shared love for poetry as the only way to express his love for her.

Based on a true story A: As she got out of the taxi, Roberta Estrela D'Alva dropped her cell phone into a sewer. It disappeared into the sewer with all her phone numbers, numbers, notes. There was no backup copy of any of this. She was about to ask for a miracle when she met her neighbour and complained to him about her suffering. The next morning, the neighbour rang to tell and show her something.

No longer bothered by her travel companion, Sally Shlalabi decided to finally eat street food on a trip to Thailand 15 years ago. On her search for more of the delicious dishes she meets a fortune teller. She pays him and holds out her hands, still smeared by the food. He makes her a prophecy for life...

Following in the footsteps of the "world collector" Richard Burton in what we now call "Tanzania", Ilija Trojanow came across a market where an old woman gave him a precious thought.

Claudius remembers his brother, Hamlet's father. His splendid appearance, which earned him the sympathy of his subjects, especially of the women. He also remembers the wars through which the Danish king gained immense power. And finally he remembers Hamlet, the "arrogant dandy". What actually prevented him, Claudius, from killing Hamlet?

As a child Kristina Tóth grew up in a high-rise housing estate built in a suburb of Budapest - the first high-rise housing estate in Hungary, with over 100,000 inhabitants. In the 5th grade she was supposed to bring a petunia to biology classes. An ordinary flower, but one that was hard to find in the satellite city. Then the mother had an idea...

A Nigerian man on the New York subway, in an intense soliloquy. Full of words familiar to his observer. Laughing, shaking his head, he says, "That's the way the world works."
The other passengers look away, thinking he's one of the many crazies on the subway. So he turns to his observer.

On his first reading tour in Mexico, Etgar Keret was approached in Spanish by a tall man with a moustache at a book signing. Keret thought the man wanted a selfie with him. But instead of taking a photo, the stranger gave Keret a hearty hug. This episode was repeated several times until Keret found out what his readers had really said to him.

As a child, Sergio Blanco hated everything about the school. The rooms, the idea of the school itself: having to learn "the rules", "the norms". He also hated the teachers and decided - spurred on by images from literature - to poison the teacher he hated most.​

A woman tries to explain to her daughter why the father is acting so recklessly. "He fights with his phantoms." They hide in his cell phone and send messages to him...

The narrator remembers his childhood, when his mother sent him to beg and told him to turn away debtors. An experience that recurs in his dreams to this day. With which feelings does he look back? 

Since her childhood, her father has told her about his travels by train - on one of the shortest railway lines in India. But the narrator never manages to take the train herself. Until she finally gets the assignment of a travel journal - and a trip full of surprises begins, which ends with the encounter with a criminal out of necessity. Should the narrator report him?

One day the playwright Marius Ivaškevičius received an inquiry from an autonomous republic in southern Siberia, unknown to him: He was to become the national playwright of Khakassia. He refused - but he had not expected the persistence of the Khakassas...

Little is known about Alma, who in the 18th century founded a community that today is home to 900 families. Alma was a former slave. She walked 400 kilometres on foot from the capital. Itamar Vieira Junior imagines what experiences she had on her way, what thoughts occupied her, what drove her.

From her apartment, the narrator looks out over a river, a cemetery - and a street between the two; in a sense, between life and death. She tells of her mother, remembers her goddesslike abilities, her quirks. And there she turns to her "Dear Mei!" - her "Dear Mother" - to send her a message between life and death. 

When David was 7 years old, he saw a scene from the Hollywood classic "The Sound of Music" on television: A nun sings the song "Climb every mountain", which accompanies David from then on and gives him the strength to make a difficult decision at an important point in his life.

In her school days, Alissa Ganieva one day discovered a kind of balcony under the window of her classroom. Realizing that the others had never noticed it, she bet she would throw herself out the window. And she did, with different consequences than she had foreseen.

During his student days Jordi Puntí rented an apartment with friends in Barcelona. The landlord kept the key to a windowless room, which the friends were not allowed to enter. The friends began to speculate: Was there a pornographic collection inside? Wasn't there a light coming from under the door? Was it a gateway to hell? What was the secret of the locked room?

A trip with the family, a house in the forest. The marinated chickens sizzle on the campfire - attracting unexpected visitors. T. C. Boyle tells a story with a surprising twist that shows that even in the worst situations there can still be redemption.  

Gali's mother came to Israel as an orphan from Bukovina, where she had used her sewing skills to ensure the survival of herself and her brother. The girl is ashamed of her mother, because she is not a native Israeli. Despite mother's help, Gali fails the sewing course at school.

Impressions from a street in Rome, completely different from the others. People not chasing after material things, following their stories in their thoughts and perceiving a colour that keeps coming back ...

19-year-old Simon sails for a year on a small ship with a friend and his father through the Mediterranean, along the French and Spanish coasts. Despite a shipwreck, they decide to continue without an engine, just like in the old days.

As a child in Romania, Herta Müller was to get a new winter coat. One with collar and cuffs made of fox fur. While choosing the fox fur she noticed the similarity between fox and hunter. The secret service later followed her into her apartment and left signs.

As a visual artist in New York, Hallgrímur Helgason one day receives a visit from a fellow Icelander who becomes increasingly drunk during the course of the evening. During dinner a very revealing error occurs.

Sofi Oksanen tells of a place where in the days of the Soviet Union - unobserved by the state - a free exchange of ideas could thrive. A place where dreams and hopes were preserved for decades and a unique art has been cultivated for generations ...

Shamin Chibba narrates the story of his grandmother. In telling the story, present and past flow into each other: Memories of a hard life, of political events in India, twists of fate and everyday experiences...

The words in this poetic text, which concludes with the lines: "...this is how love is born", act against the fear and the feeling of loneliness that creeps in these times.

Catherine is married off to the sultan by her father, the Czar. She is his 99th wife and right after their wedding the sultan forgets her. At a disco organized by the Sultan the musicians are blindfolded. Suddenly the blindfold of the handsome guitarist slips and the story takes its course...

Bae Suah was on a writing residency in Morocco. But her stay took on unexpected forms and led to new impressions, such as the sight of cats roaming empty streets like panthers, looking like prophets in disguise.

Pavlina Marvin tells of her friend Irini, who gave her a floral coat during their studies. She wears the coat to this day, as it hasn’t lost any of its flowers. When both of them wanted to meet in Athens recently, Irini didn’t show up. She was looking after an Indian man who had lost his job due to the pandemic and was therefore in great distress.

The writer and translator Michal Hvorecký works in a library in Bratislava, where one day a gentleman came in and introduced himself as the grandson of a world-famous writer. This encounter was to have consequences.

The story of Steinunn Sigurðadottir begins at the foot of Europe's largest glacier, Vatnajökull. At this place in 1910 a maid became pregnant - by the landlord. This is why she had to leave the farm, which was unfortunately usual these days. She went to Reykjavík on foot, which took 7 days at that time.
Thus begins a journey through the decades, at the end of which Steinunn's life story begins. And a gesture of generosity and kindness of heart is revealed.