Fabula festival - Ingo Schulze

Wednesday, February 21 at 7pm, MMC Kibla and Fabula festival were hosting one of the best European novelists of the 21st Century, German writer Ingo Schulze.

The conversation between the author and a big expert on his work Thomas Geiger was moderated by Amalija Maček.

About the author:
Ingo Schulze, born in Dresden in 1962, studied classical philology at the University of Jena and worked for two years as a stage manager in Altenburg theatre. Six months spent in Sankt Peterburg became an inspiration for his first book (1993), a collection of short stories 33 Moments of Happiness, that won two numerous literary awards, among them the prestigious Alfred Döblin Prize, the Ernst Willner Prize for Literature and the Aspekte-Literaturpreis. In 1998, The New Yorker listed him among Six Best European Young Novelists and on the break of the millenium, The Observer pointed him out as one of the 21st century authors that we should keep an eye on. His book Simple Storys won a Johannesa Bobrowski medal (a literary award of the city of Berlin) and his monumental novel Neue Leben (New Lives) won an important Italian literary award Premio Grinzane Cavour. His novel Handy (Cell Phone) won the Leipzig Book Fair award and the novel Adam and Evelyn, that is being made into a movie, was shortlisted for Deutscher Buchpreis - the German novel of the year award, in 2008. Ingo Schulze has blived in Berlin since 1993.

Cell Phone (translated to Slovene by Mojca Kranjc)
New year's Eve, 1999, Berlin. On the break of millennium, Frank Reichert, an east-German businessman, meets Julia, his long lost big love. Since their paths have parted in the fall of 1989, he has been feeling estranged in his life. He has been feeling indifferent to his new romantic relationships and fo the blossoming success of his business. As the new year's eve turns into a new day, this day becomes a new start that no one has anticipated. Almost every character in Schulze's new "13 stories in an old manner" collected under the title Cell Phone, wander between goodbyes and new beginnings. Sometimes all it takes is one look and a harmony of a fresh romance, a cos acquaintance of neighbours or easy-going holidays is destroyed. With a reliable feeling for tragicomical situations, Schulze deals with the nature of love, a struggle for dignity of fare-well and a gift of blessing epiphanies of everyday life.