Katerina Poladjan / Heike Geißler / Dorothee Elmiger - 39th Freiburg Literature Talk: Three readings with discussion

Katerina Poladjan: Goldstrand
Moderation: Annette Pehnt

Odessa 1922, a young woman jumps off a passenger steamer into the white foam of the wake and disappears. Her father Lew and little brother Felix set off in search of her and end up on the Bulgarian Black Sea coast. Thirty years later, Felix wants to fulfill his dream and build a vacation resort here: Goldstrand, as a place in the sun for everyone. Eli is conceived on the building site. Half a century later, he speculates and fabricates his family history in his award-winning films - and on the couch of the enigmatic Dottoressa in Rome, who begins every session with "How are you today?".

Katerina Poladjan's novels are "treasure chests", according to the jury of the German Literature Fund's Grand Prize, which the author is being awarded this year. Her new work "Goldstrand" (S. Fischer, 2025) takes us through an entire century and across the European continent, from Odessa to Constantinople and Varna in Bulgaria to Rome. With formal finesse, Katerina Poladjan tells of exile, loss and departure, combining fragments of old Europe into a cheerful and melancholy picture of the present.

Heike Geißler: Verzweiflungen
Moderation: Miriam Zeh

A girl stands in front of her swimming instructor and begs to finally be allowed to join the advanced group. But she can only swim well on the edge of the pool without a leash. The teacher is merciless and the girl is desperate. Thirty years later, Heike Geißler is an adult and still desperate - but determined to face up to this feeling. Because "despair is everywhere", deeply rooted, like the misanthropy in wars, right-wing movements, national parliaments and gender roles. It is an imposition of our time, "an expanding plant" that branches out from global climate and war disasters into cramped living conditions and the hardships of everyday life.

In her personal long essay, the multi-award-winning Leipzig-based writer Heike Geißler rejects the prevailing feeling of the present and takes a new approach, a different view. "And no, you are no less desperate after reading this book, but somehow ... more armed. More attuned. Wiser. Softer. More permeable. And that's so much!", says author Jess Jochimsen.

Dorothee Elmiger: Die Holländerinnen
Moderation: Thomas Geiger

Ten years after the trail of two women is lost in the South American rainforest, a celebrated theater maker plans an expedition to the last secure stations of their journey in order to reconstruct the case. As part of the group hired for the expedition, a writer
meticulously documents all the circumstances and experiences of the journey in order to provide the material for a new kind of play in which fiction and reality merge. But the record of events is undermined by questionable elements: Associations, mistaken identities, coincidences. Driven by the unwavering intuition of the theater maker, the group continues its journey, deeper and deeper into the thicket overgrown with unease.

With "Die Holländerinnen" (Hanser, 2025), Swiss author Dorothee Elmiger presents her fourth, densely woven novel. The visually powerful, atmospheric text draws the reader down through ever more layers like a maelstrom and unfolds a disturbing story of fear and violence, of being lost in the universe and of the failure of narratives.
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Photos from left to right: © Francesco Gattoni, Heike Steinweg, Georg Gatsas

Sponsors: Cultural Office of the City of Freiburg, Ministry of Science, Research and the Arts Baden-Württemberg, Sparkasse Freiburg-Nördlicher Breisgau, Guzzoni-Federer-Stiftung, Schweizer Kulturstiftung Pro Helvetia and Lyrikempfehlungen für Kinder, kindly supported by Buchhandlung jos fritz and Park Hotel Post

Date: 8.11.2025, 10 am - 1 pm
Location: Literaturhaus, Bertoldstrasse 17
Admission: 11/7 euros

Literature talk
Literaturhaus