Wed 13 June 7.30pm
DORIS DÖRRIE WITH MICHELE ROBERTS
A rare opportunity to meet Doris Dörrie, one of the most successful
contemporary German filmmakers and also "one of the best story-tellers
on the German literary scene" (Andreas Kilb, Die Zeit).
Her novel Where Do We Go From Here?, to be published in English by
Bloomsbury in June 2001, is an astute and witty study of midlife crisis
and the path of spiritual redemption. Fred Kaufmann is a disillusioned
salesman and failed film director. Both his wife Claudia and his
15-year-old daughter Franka have embraced Buddhism. Fred has not. He
therefore takes Franka on a journey to a Buddhist retreat in Southern
France, in the mistaken hope that everyday contact with the Buddhist way
of life will cure her of her infatuation with a young lama. This trip
provides the setting for a bizarre series of events which underline
Fred's sense of his life being out of control. Initially extremely
sceptical about the teachings at the retreat, he gradually comes round
to a more accepting view of life.
Doris Dörrie studied drama in the United States and continued her
studies at the Academy of Television and Film in Munich where she now
lives and works. Her remarkable body of work comprises ten feature
films, including the ground-breaking Men, seven volumes of short
stories, a novel, and three children's books.
Michèle Roberts is the author of ten highly praised novels including
Daughters of the House (1992), which won the WH Smith Literature Award
and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. She has also published short
stories and poetry, most recently collected in All the Selves I Was.
Half-French and half-English, Roberts lives in London and Mayenne,
France.
In association with Bloomsbury.
Tickets: £3.
Venue: Goethe-Institut London, 50 Princes Gate, Exhibition Road, London
SW7 2PH, tel 020 7596 4000 / 4046.
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