Sasha Salzmann presents "Glorious People"

How can one be “glorious” in a country where corruption and oppression reign, where only those who submit to a restrictive regime survive? And how is one supposed to overcome this experience if it is not talked about, not even after the system has collapsed, not even after one has left the country and not even with one’s own daughter? “What do they see when they peer through the curtains into the courtyard of an East German town with their Soviet eyes?”, Nina wonders when she thinks of her mother Tatjana and her friend Lena, who left Ukraine in the mid-nineties, got stranded in Jena and had to start all over again. Lena’s daughter Edi has long since stopped asking, she wants nothing to do with her origins. Until Lena’s fiftieth birthday brings four women together again and they realize that they all share a story.
Sasha Salzmann’s new novel talks about times of upheaval, from the "meat grinder time" of perestroika to present-day Germany, about how systems disintegrate, and people are swept along by the maelstrom of events. It follows four biographies and explores the inextricable entanglement of the generations, across time and space. A novel of powerful imagery, great empathy and intensity.
Sasha Salzmann was born in Volgograd in 1985 and grew up in Moscow. In 1995, they emigrated to Germany with their family. Salzmann studied literature, theatre and media at the University of Hildesheim and creative writing for the stage at the Berlin University of the Arts and is now an award-winning playwright, essayist, and curator. Salzmann is the co-founder of the culture magazine freitext, was the artistic director of STUDIO Я (Best Experimental Stage of the Year 2014). Salzmann's work has been translated, performed and awarded in over 20 countries.
William Pierce is editor of the literary and cultural magazine AGNI. His fiction and essays have appeared in Granta, Harvard Review, Ecotone, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere.
Copies of the book will be available for purchase during and after the event, and there will be a book signing following the program.

Co-presented by the Transnational Literature Series at Brookline Booksmith.
The Transnational Literature Series focuses on stories of migration, the intersection of politics and literature, and works in translation and is supported by the independent bookstore Brookline Booksmith.