In 2016, alongside many people seeking protection, a writer from Afghanistan also came to Germany. A work grant from the Heinrich-Böll-Haus Langenbroich association took Taqi Akhlaqi (1986) to the city of Düren.

Before this trip he had only seen Europe through its literature and art and knew Germany through its writers and philosophers. He therefore left Kabul with many wonderful ideas about what would await him in Germany. Among other things, he was convinced that Germans, when spoken to in a friendly manner on the street, would give him lines off the cuff Thus spoke zarathustra could recite.

The Germany that Taqi Akhlaqi reveals is so wondrous and full of surprises that at the end of his scholarship stay he returns to Afghanistan to reflect on what he has seen and experienced. He does this so thoroughly, so ruthlessly self-critically and with so much humor that anyone who reads his observations is inspired to question their own customs, everyday rituals and ways of thinking, to “alienate themselves”, as the author puts it, and the to discover your own society with new eyes.

Taqi Akhlaqi

Translated from Persian by Jutta Himmelreich

Erzählung| 1. Auflage 2024 | Softcover mit Schutzumschlag | 275 Seiten

will be published in June