Diasporic Echoes im Avant-Garten

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FAZ Review

SZ Portrait of Sasha Filipenko

SZ Letter from Sasha Filipenko

ARD TV-report

NDR Kulturjournal radio feature

At 18:30 (Reading in German) »Murder is not the only way to put pressure on journalists,« says Sasha Filipenko about his novel »Die Jagd« (Diogenes Verlag, 2022). In this »merciless thriller that captivates to the last page« (WDR3), the Belarusian writer tells the story of a manhunt for the young journalist Anton Quint. In today's Russia, the journalist tries to bring the truth about an oligarch to light, whereupon the oligarch's henchmen make his life a living hell - with increasing intensity up to the brutal book finale and with parallel interwoven stories of a cellist and a soccer player. In the process, the uncorruptible journalist is confronted by another journalist in the service of the oligarch, who unscrupulously drafts the script for the destruction of the critical writer and, in addition to the physical persecution, also directs the public execution via fake news through the media. Sasha Filipenko thus succeeds in creating a dystopian portrait of the Russian present, in which truth is increasingly a question of money and power. Giving up and leaving the country is nevertheless out of the question for Filipenko's novel character, even if the consequences are brutal.

Sasha Filipenko, born in Minsk in 1984, is a Belarusian writer who writes in Russian. After dropping out of classical music training, he studied literature in St. Petersburg and has worked as a journalist, screenwriter, gag writer for a satirical show, and television host, including for the independent TV station Doschd, which recently resumed broadcasting from Latvia after its forced suspension in March. »Die Jagd« was published in 2016 and was nominated for the Big Book Award and the Russian Booker Prize in Russia. After numerous political texts in which Filipenko criticized the Belarusian Lukashenko regime, among others, and which were published in newspapers such as the Guardian or the Süddeutsche Zeitung, the author had to leave his place of residence in St. Petersburg and has been living in European exile in changing places of residence since 2020.

At 20:30 Ukrainian family Böttcher has won numerous prizes at international music festivals and will play a diverse repertoire from Paganini to Piazzolla, from classical to jazz at Waldbühne. VIOLIN: André Böttcher / GUITAR: Bogomir Böttcher / VOCALS: Julia Böttcher, Gabriel Böttcher

A three-week series of events brings together diasporic voices at the Waldbühne with readings and concerts. The war in Ukraine resulted in a wave of solidarity and an openness to welcome people fleeing from this war. Because we love this energy and want it for all those who have to leave their homeland, every Thursday to Saturday the Summer Festival, in cooperation with the ZEIT Foundation and NDR, presents authors and musicians and their stories about times of upheaval and displacement, of the search for belonging and empowerment, and of global political and family entanglements. Each evening begins with a reading, including a discussion with the authors and NDR journalists, and continues with acoustic concerts in a small setting (programmed by Anas Aboura und Alexei Volinchik).