Reading
Sigrid Nunez
Downtown, Uptown, Crosstown - Literature from New York
Nisma Cherrat reads from the German translation.
Ten protagonists of the New York literary scene read at the House of World Cultures: famous voices and newcomers, novelists and poets. Polyphony in all respects – these authors offer insights into the diversity of cultural, ethnic and social affiliations that make up life in New York. They tell of worlds between cultures, of experience at the margins of society, and they search for forms through which to portray the complexity of our globalised present.
Sigrid Nunez, daughter of a Chinese-Panamanian and a German, is well-placed to portray the encounter between very different family and cultural backgrounds in the New World. In the tradition of the "Great American Novel", she writes unadorned and unpretentious prose that captures the spirit of the time. Her latest novel, "The Last of Her Kind", reconstructs the student unrest of the 1960s, focusing on two women at a small New York college – one rich and idealistic, the other poor and pragmatic.
Moderated by Eva Boesenberg, Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin
