Dear all,
You are warmly invited to a
BILINGUAL READING hosted by the English Postgraduate Research Seminar in collaboration with the German Department
in Reading Week, on Thursday 6th November at 5:15pm in Lock-Keeper's Cottage. In Reading Week, we welcome
Abbas Khider who will read from his novel
The Village Indian. The novel will be read in English and German, followed by a discussion and Q&A as well as a drinks reception and dinner.
Biography
Abbas Khider was born in Baghdad in 1973. In the 1990s he was imprisoned for two years for ‘political reasons’, and fled the country in 1996. Between 1996 and 1999 he sought refuge illegally in several
countries, finally settling in Germany in 2000. Khider studied Philosophy and Literature in Munich and Potsdam, and currently lives in Berlin.
His debut novel in German,
Der falsche Inder (The Village Indian), appeared in 2008 and was awarded the Adalbert von Chamisso Prize in 2010. His novel
Die Orangen des Präsidenten (Oranges from the President) was published in 2011 and
Brief in die Auberginenrepublik (Letter to the Eggplant Republic) appeared in February 2013. He has won numerous prizes for his poetry and prose, including the Nelly Sachs
Prize, 2013.
Der Falsche Inder (2008)/The Village Indian
(2013)
Part Odyssey of the Persian Gulf and part "1001 Nights" set in Europe, this debut novel is drawn from the author's experiences as a political prisoner and as a refugee. Our hero, Rasul Hamid describes the
eight different ways he fled his home in Iraq and the eight different ways he has failed to find a way home. From Iraq via Northern Africa through Europe and back again, Abbas Khider deftly blends the tragic with the comic, and the grotesque with the ordinary,
in order to tell the story of suffering the real and brutal dangers of life as a refugee - and to remember the haunting faces of those who did not survive the journey. This is a stunning piece of storytelling, a novel of unusual scope that brings to life the
endless cycle of illegal entry and deportation that defines life for a vulnerable population living on the margins of legitimate society. Translated by Donal McLaughlin,
The Village Indian provides what every good translation should: a literary looking glass between two cultures, between two places, between East and West.
