„Komm ich da drin vor?“ – Wenn Literatur persönlich wird

What is the personal aspect of a book, beyond all the topics it deals with and all clearly recognizable concerns? How does a connection between my life experience and my reading experience emerge? And in what form do those who write books also appear in them personally? “This book is my most personal”, that’s probably always the case, because without the person who wrote it, the book wouldn’t exist. It doesn’t matter whether the author tells her ‘own’ story or not: In any case, it is ‘I’ who wrote the book and ‘I’ who read it. My most personal book can be the one in which I don’t talk about myself, my most personal reading can be the moment when I forget myself. So why is it that I take a book personally? What about it triggers that, what in me, what in you?

Hannes Becker and Henning Bochert approach these questions by reading from their new texts Lidokork and Die weißen Hände, and by discussing them.

Hannes Becker writes plays, radio plays, prose and poetry. He translates plays and poems from English, including works by Pamela Carter, Caryl Churchill, Jerry Lieblich, Matthew López, Charles Reznikoff and Rosmarie Waldrop. Together with Marlene-Sophie Haagen, he hosts the podcast ZEMENT GIESSEN.

Henning Bochert works as a writer, dramatic advisor/dramaturge, lecturer and literary as well as a certified translator in Berlin. His plays have been produced at theatres in Berlin, Leipzig, and Frankfurt/Main. He translated Eve Leigh, Dawn King, George Brant, Rhea Leman, Adam Rapp and others into German, and Özlem Dündar, Christoph Hein, Martin Heckmanns into English. His prose was published in several literary magazines. www.henningbochert.de