Reading & Talk: Takis Würger - For Polina

Hannes Prager grows up in an unusual place: in a dilapidated villa in the middle of the moor, with a self-confident mother, an oddball father substitute and the girl Polina. Hannes is a quiet boy, but he creates entire symphonies in his head without ever putting a single note on paper. In them he captures the whole essence of a person, his dreams, his hopes.

When Hannes is fourteen, he has to leave the Moorvilla. Hannes loses Polina, who is his best friend and becomes his first love. And he stops composing. Instead of playing pianos, he now carries grand and upright pianos into houses, apartments and concert halls in Hamburg. But Hannes can never forget the shining light of his childhood days, the girl Polina, who disappeared from his life after a quarrel. To find her, he does the only thing he really knows how to do: He starts making music again.

Takis Würger studied the history of ideas at the Henri Nannen School of Journalism and at the University of Cambridge. He writes as a journalist for Der Spiegel and has reported from Afghanistan, Libya and Iraq, among other places. He has won numerous prizes for his reporting, including the German Reporter Prize and the CNN Journalist Award. His debut novel "Der Club" was published in 2017 and was nominated for the aspekte literature prize. This was followed by four more books, which have since been published in twelve countries.