Reading List # 115
An entirely subjective list of things happening in Berlin
March 3
All You Can Read - mit Josephine Apraku und Ozan Zakariya Keskinkılıç
How does literature change when writing and reading take place at the kitchen table? In their new reading series “All You Can Read,” Josephine Apraku and Ozan Zakariya Keskinkılıç serve up literature at the public kitchen table with their guests: for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. “All You Can Read” invites you to a meal where texts, memories, family influences, and political issues are discussed with mouths full. The table is set, be their guests!
Requirements for participation: Bring your own dishes (plate, soup bowl, knife, fork, spoon, and a glass)!
The kick-off event of the “All You Can Read” series is an event organized by the Literaturhaus Berlin in cooperation with the – recently defunded – Goethe-Institut im Exil.
(DE)
7 pm | Zirkuszelt CABUWAZI, Columbiadamm 84
March 4
Book launch: Hayat Erdoğan - “Hauptsache kein Zeitgeist”
A girl learns the beat of the Turkish national anthem on a drum. Years later, her mother is at the door and pulls her by the hand, back to Germany. Years later still, she is abandoned by a man she calls “Nobody,” and she can’t shake her longing for Nobody. Anything to not become cynical.
In “Hauptsache kein Zeitgeist”, the present unfolds before us like a woven carpet in 24 hours. The heroine of the novel is a cosmopolitan and a migrant. She practices affirmation and meditation, educates herself in social philosophy, and rolls her eyes at the dreary tropes of scientists at conferences. She travels to Trieste and meets John, travels into the past and gets to know herself. She doesn’t want to be modern, but she is.
(DE)
8 pm | Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, Linienstr. 227
March 4
KW X DAAD: Elif Batuman and Merve Emre
An evening of literary conversation with Elif Batuman and Merve Emre, whose work bridges fiction and criticism, the aesthetic life and the life of the mind. Through readings and discussion, the authors reflect on books that shaped them — and on how literature forms both the way we write and experience the world.
Elif Batuman is the author of Either/Or (2022) and The Idiot (2017), a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the Women’s Prize, as well as the essay collection The Possessed (2010), which began her ongoing conversation with world literature. A longtime staff writer at The New Yorker, Batuman explores the intersections of politics, literature, and life. She is a 2026 Literature Fellow of the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program.
Merve Emre, Shapiro-Silverberg Professor at Wesleyan University, is the author of The Ferrante Letters (2020), The Personality Brokers (2018), and Paraliterary (2017). A frequent contributor to The New Yorker, Emre examines literary institutions, reading practices, and the cultural work of criticism.
(EN)
7 pm | KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Auguststraße 69
March 5
Preis der Leipziger Buchmesse 2026:
Belletristik
Who are the authors hoping to win the Leipzig Book Fair Prize in 2026? On this evening, the fiction nominees will take to our stage, read from their books, and discuss them with Jörg Plath (Deutschlandfunk Kultur) and Carsten Tesch (MDR):
Helene Bukowski: “Wer möchte nicht im Leben bleiben”, Claassen
Norbert Gstrein: “Im ersten Licht”, Hanser
Anja Kampmann: “Die Wut ist ein heller Stern”, Hanser
Katerina Poladjan: “Goldstrand”, S. Fischer
Elli Unruh: “Fische im Trüben”, TRANSIT
(DE)
7.30 pm | Literarisches Colloquium Berlin, Am Sandwerder 5