Sometimes one sentence is enough to make you fall in love with a book. In the case of Eleanor Catton’s novel “The Forest”, it could be this with which the author casually dismantles her heroine Mira in the first pages: “Like all self-translated rebels, Mira preferred dealing with enemies rather than rivals, and She often referred to her rivals as enemies so that it was easier to despise them as conservative protectors of their vested interests.”
The story is just beginning; The self-confident founder of a guerrilla gardening group came across an old white man online who the Queen knighted as a New Zealand environmentalist. Silly enough in the eyes of the young activist, but does the man also have to pretend to be the savior of the dying ivory-fronted parakeet? A bird she has never heard of?
Revealing irony, unexpected refractions, and all of this in connection with pressing current issues such as climate protection – that Eleanor Catton can write, quickly becomes clear when you read into her new novel. The New Zealand writer, at the age of 38 already a Booker Prize winner (for “The Starry Stars”), will present her eco-thriller on April 15th at the Literaturhaus. And then probably after readers like Barack Obama, who recommended “The Forest” on his summer reading list, also convince the German audience.
The climate issue is currently inspiring many new books. Like the novel “The Longest Summer of Her Life” by the Munich writer Amelie Fried, which, in addition to the climate, is also about a generational conflict: an entrepreneur is thrown off track when her daughter, who has just come of age, joins radical climate activists. Fried will present her novel at a reading party for Heyne-Verlag’s 90th birthday on April 22nd at the Literaturhaus. The sold-out evening, on which, among others, bestseller colleague Jan Weiler and presenter Thomas Gottschalk also take part, can also be experienced in the stream.
Advocates for thinking in utopias Carolin Emcke in her book “What is true. About violence and climate”, she will present it on April 15th at the NS Documentation Center. A “great parable about the nature of man and nature in resistance against man” (Robert Menasse) is again Gaea Schoeters‘ Novel “Trophy”. The Flemish author takes aim at the topic of big game hunting in Africa, which will be held on April 17th at the Literaturhaus.
In the series “Earth, Fire, Water, Air” Lukas Bärfuss works out how a world whose ecosystems are being destroyed more and more every day could be saved with various guests at the Kammerspiele. On April 17th, the writer spoke to his British colleague AL Kennedy based on her early text “Bullfight” about the “murderous relationship between humans and animals”.
“Gusts in the Tree,” begins a poem by Olga Martynova. The science of a tree is “patience and surrender,” she continues without illusions and finally asks: “Why is the air so shallow, the earth so brittle, the silence so impetuous and distant?” The Russian writer, who has been writing in German for years and knows the topic of grief in many ways, will be a guest at the Lyrik Kabinett on April 9th.
Can a “Green Deal” even succeed in stopping climate change and species extinction? The economist Jonas Beer shows possible solutions in his non-fiction book “European Climate Plan”, which he will present on May 2nd in the city library at Motorama. What now? He will certainly answer the anxious question like this: What to do.