ZOORAMA

Tue, 7. Jul // 20:00 , Maschinenhaus (Kulturbrauerei) entrance: Knaackstraße 97, 10435 Berlin (Knaackstraße 97, 10435 Berlin)

Technical Note: We recommend arriving early for this event! Starting at 5:00 p.m., the Maschinenhaus will only be accessible via the KNAACKSTRASSE entrance. Reception and ticket sales for OSTPOL BERLIN will only be available then at the ticket tent in the courtyard! (This is due to the public soccer broadcast taking place in the courtyard of the Kulturbrauerei…)

Zoorama – Novel: Reading and discussion with Zaza Burchuladze 
Host: Martin Jankowski
Narrator: Uwe Neumann

They say there’s an animal in all of us. But is there also a human being in all of us?

A young Georgian family, in the midst of Berlin’s grey winter. Exiles who must start a new life, yet are haunted by their past. And a high-rise block, hermetically sealed off, yet seemingly harbouring the whole of this mad world: fugitive generals, escaped zoo animals and heaps of rubbish. There is scarcely any room left for the future. An intense novel about the loss and rediscovery of language, and the family as the last community in an inhospitable present.

The father, a writer, is slowly losing his ability to speak. His daughter Stella, on the other hand, is constantly playing with words. Her mother, Marika, always has to find a solution to every problem. As they set off for a child’s birthday party on the other side of town, they come across a second story set in an old Soviet-era high-rise. Cut off from the outside world by electric fences and barred windows, the residents are visibly suffocating in their own rubbish. Fugitive generals and escaped zoo animals haunt the corridors, and for some time now the children have been disappearing. Can humanity be saved, or will it wipe itself out? What is the point of telling stories, of hoping, if in the end all our creations merely add to the rubbish? Zoorama is a literary quest for the means of survival in a world that has been thrown into disarray.

»To me, Zoorama is like a labyrinth that one traverses breathlessly, as if it were impossible to pause or even turn back. Much like Dante’s Virgil, the author’s alter ego guides us unerringly through his own personal Inferno. He leads us through the grubby, grey streets of Berlin, into a fragmented Tbilisi – which, for him, now consists solely of set pieces – and into an apocalyptic high-rise block with its bizarre, doomed inhabitants.« Nino Haratischwili
»Today, many Eastern Europeans are once again being forced to flee to the West, into exile, out of fear. One such refugee is Zaza Burchuladze. […] Yet the country one takes with them into exile is no bigger than the soles of one’s feet and the grief in one’s mind.« Herta Müller
»Zaza Burchuladze is a distinctive, original writer who is unlike any other. His prose has an element of unpredictability about it – the most important hallmark of quality for a contemporary author.« Wladimir Sorokin

The event will be held in German and English (with translation)!

Tickets are €5 (reduced price €3) and are available only at the box office in the Maschinenhaus.

We look forward to your questions and comments during the event here: Facebook-Event

© Graham Hains