What does success look like in the literary industry? Rebecca F. Kuang knows all about it. In her new novel “Yellowface,” her first-person narrator is an author who pursues success through unfair means. “The literary world,” she thinks disillusionedly, “picks a winner – attractive enough, cool and young and, let’s be honest, we all think it, so let’s say it, ‘diverse’ enough – and shower this person with money and support. It’s so damn arbitrary.”
However, it’s probably not that arbitrary after all; Kuang himself is a good example of this. The author from the USA, who recently had a bestseller with “Babel”, has more to offer than attractiveness or coolness; It’s no coincidence that her Munich reading of “Yellowface” (May 15, Hugendubel) has long been sold out. And Kuang is just one of several prominent writers who will be reading to full halls in Munich in the next few weeks.
To quickly tick off the sold-out readings: There are no longer any tickets available for Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk (May 14th, All Saints Hofkirche). Anyone against it? Karl Ove Knausgård who wants to hear still has a chance; the Norwegian best-selling author presents his novel “The Third Kingdom” (May 16, Large LMU auditorium).
:Evenings with many levels
Schiller’s “Maria Stuart” is being released at the Residenztheater and Kleist’s “The Broken Pitcher” at the Volkstheater. But there is more to discover in May than just premieres.
If bestseller lists mean less to you than intellectual flights of fancy, you could do just that on May 16th Head to the Poetry Cabinet: The Dresden Writer Durs Grünbein then meets his British translator Karen Leeder, who the Munich audience was able to get to know two years ago on the occasion of her Villa Waldberta scholarship. The two have been in communication for more than a decade, and it will be interesting to hear how Leeder translates Grünbein’s following lines and justifies her version: “Being there, in the middle of the madness – usually in the wrong place. / The brain is not a bunker, but outside there is war / About everything that is excessive: faith, sexual happiness, money / The brain never rests, it protests, is always litigating.”
Anyone whose brain never rests will also attend the Munich writer’s poetry lectures Slata Roshal correct (May 15th/23rd/29th, LMU). Or at a reading by the Ukrainian-German author Lana Luxwhich presents her novel “Ordered Conditions” (May 16, Glockenbach bookstore). Or at Lukas Bärfuss‘ fourth evening in the series “Earth, Fire, Water, Air”, on which he meets the Green Party politician Anton Hofreiter (May 29, Chamber plays).
Anyone who wants to accompany the development of success could also try out the new interactive format “Keil’s Literaturrausch”, in which the critic Günter Keil works with the best-selling authors Anne Freytag, Yasmin Shakarami and Alexandra Blöchl speaks (May 15, Heppel & Ettlich). Or on May 17th in the Chamber plays sit: stand there Barbi Markowic , Dana Vowinckel and Wilke Weermann who are contesting the final of the “Text & Language” literary prize of the German Business Cultural Group. The morning after their presentation, the jury will decide who will take home the prize money of 20,000 euros. Using Kuang’s criteria, who would she classify as attractive, cool, young and diverse enough?