Read. Talk. Share.
Read our book of the month and join us for a discussion online! Simply register via Eventbrite to receive the Zoom access info. Let's keep reading and sharing experiences with the material!
Book Klub is free and open to everyone interested, but participants must purchase the individual texts themselves and are expected to have read the title to be discussed prior to the meeting.
The Appointment is available
only in English. The discussion will be in English.
Registration
About the novel:
In a well-appointed examination in London, a young woman unburdens herself to a certain Dr. Seligman. Though she can barely see above his head, she holds forth about her life and desires, her struggles with her sexuality and identity. Born and raised in Germany, she has been living in London for several years, determined to break free from her family origins and her haunted homeland. But the recent death of her grandfather, and an unexpected inheritance, make it clear that you cannot easily outrun your own shame, whether it be physical, familial, historical, national, or all of the above.
Or can you? With Dr. Seligman’s help, our narrator will find out.
In a monologue that is both deliciously dark and subversively funny, she takes us on a wide-ranging journey from Hitler-centered sexual fantasies and overbearing mothers to the medicinal properties of squirrel tails and the notion that anatomical changes can serve as historical reparation.
The Appointment is an audacious debut novel by an explosive new international literary voice, challenging all of our notions of what is fluid and what is fixed, and the myriad ways we seek to make peace with others and ourselves in the 21st century.
About the author:
Photo (detail): © Liz Seabrook
Katharina Volckmer was born in Germany in 1987. She lives in London, where she works for a literary agency.
The Appointment is her first novel. It has been translated into 10 languages and longlisted for the Rathbone Folio Prize and Republic of Consciousness Prize in 2021.
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