In his last great novel Sankofa (Sujet Verlag), which is now published posthumously, beats Doğan Akhanlı (1957–2021) a large arc from persecuted opposition members in an Anatolian village to Cologne at the time of the NSU murders to the USA during the Black Lives Matter demos.
Talk about the novel and its author Gerrit Wustmann and Çiler Fırtına.
In all twenty-six years, she had never heard her husband say anything political. In fact, the lieutenant had built a wall of photographs between himself and the events he witnessed. He saw the world through the camera and in the pictures, perceived everything that happened as if it had nothing to do with him, as if everything were out there somewhere.
A Turkish writer, hunted by a first lieutenant, a theater maker in Cologne, a Kurd who wants to walk from Germany to Diyarbakır - these are just four of the characters, the lives and stories that Dogan Akhanli creates a complex panorama of the German-Turkish History of the last fifty years interwoven.
In his last novel, which he completed shortly before his untimely death, Doğan Akhanli once again covers the broad spectrum from the military coup in Turkey in 1980 to the NSU terror to the Black Lives Matter movement; It's about the role of minorities in Turkish nationalism as well as the lie of the Germans who believe that they have dealt with Nazi crimes, while murderous Nazis are once again roaming the country and racism is becoming socially acceptable again in the middle of society. It's about perpetrators and victims and the question of how easily the boundaries between the two can become blurred - and about hope in the form of a learning process. Doğan Akhanli depicts all the absurdities of human cruelty without ever losing the optimistic view of humanity.
Event partner: KulturForum TurkeyDeutschland e.V.
