The element of language is the fluid, believes Kim de l’Horizon. It is the “sluggish, the deep, the latent, the carrying, sweeping, surging, the drowning, storing, giving life, inexhaustible, reflecting, harboring monsters, dissolving”. According to the novel “Blood Book”, writing is also a wavy line, “a wave coming from afar, which began long before me and will continue to flow long after me”.
Kim de l’Horizon has already carried this wave of writing a long way, including winning the German and Swiss Book Prizes in 2022, to now hopefully roll out gently at a reading in the Munich Literature House before returning to the vast ocean of words: ” Because I was always a water, my body always felt how much it is a flow, a being in motion,” as Kim de l’Horizon writes.
How can rigid body images and gender definitions be broken up and made to flow, how can and must language react to this? Kim de l’Horizon has created a novel that is well worth reading on this much-discussed topic – and the presentation of “Blutbuch” on January 23rd is the first highlight of the Munich literary year, which will have a lot more starry sparkles to offer in the coming weeks.
To begin with House of Literature and to stick to the gender question: Kim de l’Horizon’s reading fits perfectly into the rich accompanying program of the current exhibition on Simone de Beauvoir. “On ne naît pas femme, on le devient” – one is not born a woman, one becomes one, is the most famous sentence of the French writer and feminist. Kim de l’Horizon, who defines himself as a non-binary person, would probably put it differently today. But both would certainly agree on one thing: you have to make the patriarchal relationships dance. Or to flow.
Kim de l’Horizon did not only try this at the award ceremony for the German Book Prize in Frankfurt – shaving his hair in front of the cameras provoked a statement in addition to admiration and some hatred. Even a novel with a non-binary narrative character, one’s own family history and thus on the trail of the ancient oppression and persecution of women, among other things as witches, is not yet mainstream today. This is more like an attempt at healing magic, murmured into the Wind of Change, with echoes of fairy tales as well as explicit sex scenes. A book that rushes through various forms and languages, a praise of ambivalence and diversity. So maybe: water magic.
The British writer Bernardine Evaristo presents her new novel “Mr. Loverman” in Munich.
(Photo: Matt Crossick/imago images/PA Images)
Rigid rules that a society imposes on people, their bodies and their love lives – the British are also familiar with this topic Writer Bernardine Evaristo out, since the Booker Prize for her novel “Girl, Woman, etc.” a literary star. She will present her novel “Mr. Loverman” in the accompanying program of the exhibition on March 15th. Not enough celebrity: The American writer Siri Hustvedt is also expected with a new volume of essays with the meaningful title “Mothers, Fathers and Perpetrators” (March 10), as well as the French bestselling author Virginie Despentes with the somewhat louder-sounding novel title “Dear Asshole” (April 26).
But why look too far into the distant future – there is already a lot to do in the Literature House in the coming weeks: Daniela Dröscher, for example, will talk about destructive family relationships on January 24th based on her much-praised novel “Lügen über meine Mutter”. As far as the often cruel relationship between people is concerned, we call them men and women for the sake of habit, Ulrike Draesner also comes up with a powerful word magic: “Die Verwandten” is the name of her new novel, which lets women of several generations have their say – and that Silence puts an end to collective traumas such as rape in World War II (February 7). Dörte Hansen, on the other hand, has a lot of sea noise around a North Sea island to offer in her novel “Zur See” (January 28) – her writing is also a never-ending wave of success.
Actor and author Steffen Schroeder reflects on the friendship between famous men.
(Photo: Florian Peljak)
If someone (Kim de l’Horizon would put it very nicely: someone) should be wondering whether only various female authors are going on a reading tour this year – of course not. Of course, there is still no shortage of important authors, among others the Bosnian doyen Dževad Karahasan (January 26) and the Senegalese-French young star Mohamed Mbougar Sarr (February 8) have been announced in the Literaturhaus in the next few weeks.
And there are a few more institutions in Munich that try to attract people who write and read books. Theaters such as the Kammerspiele, for example, in whose Habibi kiosk the German-Moroccan author Mohamed Amjahid will be reading on January 21st, or the Volkstheater, where the actor and author Steffen Schroeder will be giving a talk on January 26th based on his new novel “Planck oder Als das Licht seine lightness lost” analyzed the friendship between Max Planck and Albert Einstein.
The Monacensia, on the other hand, turns towards important women. The literature archive is currently constantly expanding its online magazine for its own exhibition “Living freely! The women of the Boheme 1890 – 1920” – and after a first book on the subject recently has one another backing band published with a lot of material on authors such as Emmy Hennings, Franziska zu Reventlow or Else Lasker-Schüler.
In the Monacensia, the local scene is not only well connected from a historical point of view, as a “festival for all Munich authors and those interested in literature” on January 20th will once again prove. Christina Madenach, Korbinian Jaud, Dagmar Leupold, Zafer Şenocak, Beatrix Rinke and Luvan will read, accompanied by music from DJs Ayda, Funky Francis and Mira Mann.
Musician and author: Mira Mann performs at the Monacensia.
(Photo: Gino Dambrowski)
Prefer to immerse yourself in the flow of a poem? The young spoken-word scene is active in rhyming in Muffatwerk (January 31), for example, while the fine translations by sinologist Thomas O. Höllmann in Lyrik Kabinett (February 1) take you back to ancient China. “Expectation and Melancholy” is the name of his new volume; a title that also goes well with another event that is very close to the present: the Ukrainian poet Halyna Petrosanyak, who has been a member of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts since last year, will be reading from her work there on January 19.
There they are again, the many unsolved problems, especially of a war in Europe, which are flooding into this year as well. And one would wish so much that Petrosanyak’s lines would also work as healing magic; that they bring movement into language and into the world.