You are cordially invited to attend a reading/discussion with Bernardine
Evaristo and Zafer Senocak chaired by Tom Cheesman. We are pleased to
offer complimentary tickets to members of the German Studies List - just
send me an e-mail, and I shall deposit the comps for you at the
Goethe-Institut's reception.
Barbara Honrath
Thursday 28 June 7.30pm
TRANSNATIONAL WRITERS: BERNARDINE AND ZAFER SENOCAK
An encounter between two exciting new writers whose works reflect the
increasingly transnational aspect of contemporary culture in Germany and
Britain. Bernardine Evaristo and Zafer Senocak will read from recent
work and consider the ways in which their writing is rooted in the
multicultural context of their respective cities, London and Berlin.
Zafer Senocak was born in Ankara but has lived primarily in Berlin since
1970. A leading voice in contemporary German debates on national
identity and multiculturalism, he has published poetry, novels and
essays. A selection of his essays on Germany and Turkey, 'East' and
'West' appeared in English in December 2000, Atlas of a Tropical Germany
(transl. Leslie Adelson). His most recent works of fiction are
Gefährliche Verwandtschaft ('Dangerous Relations,' 1999), which examines
identity politics in post-wall Germany through the prism of a narrator
of mixed German-Jewish and Turkish parentage, and Der Erottomane ('The
Erottomaniac,' 2000).
Bernardine Evaristo was raised in South London by her Nigerian father
and English mother. In 1982, her first play, Moving Through, was staged
at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, and she co-founded the Theatre of
Black Women. Evaristo has lived in Spain and Turkey and currently lives
in London. Her first collection of poetry, Island of Abraham, was
published in 1994, her first novel, Lara, in 1997. This book, which
traces the two ancestral strands of a girl who grows up in London in the
60s and 70s, was chosen as a Daily Telegraph, New Statesman and The
Journal 'Book of the Year'. Her new novel, The Emperor's Babe, will be
published by Penguin in July 2001.
The conversation will be chaired by Dr Tom Cheesman, Lecturer in German
at the University of Wales Swansea. He has published numerous articles
on Turkish-German fiction of the 90s, and is currently co-editing a
volume on Zafer Senocak including new poems and critical contributions
on Senocak's work.
Tickets £3.
Venue: Goethe-Institut London, 50 Princes Gate, Exhibition Road, London
SW7 2PH, tel 020 7596 4000
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