Reading and Conversation: Navid Kermani

What is it like when the familiar world dissolves and certainties become fragile? Navid Kermani captures this moment in a single summer: a friend, who had recently gone down a political wrong path, has taken his own life. Wars draw closer and debates become more shrill. In an inimitable way, Navid Kermani succeeds in understanding our present from its contradictions, reconciling the seemingly irreconcilable, and, more importantly, enduring what is truly irreconcilable.

Navid Kermani, born in 1967 in Siegen, lives as a freelance writer in Cologne. He has received numerous awards, including the Kleist Prize, the Joseph Breitbach Prize, the Hölderlin Prize, the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, and in 2024, the Thomas Mann Prize for his novel "Das Alphabet bis S" (Novel, 2023). Other works published by Hanser include "Dein Name" (Novel, 2011), "Über den Zufall" (Edition Akzente, 2012), "Große Liebe" (Novel, 2014), "Album" (Short Stories, 2014), "Sozusagen Paris" (Novel, 2016), as well as his correspondence with Natan Sznaider titled "Israel" (2023). "Ayda, Bär und Hase" (2017) was his first book in the children's and young adult program of Hanser Verlag, followed by "Jeder soll von da, wo er ist, einen Schritt näher kommen" (2022) and "Zu Hause ist es am schönsten, sagte die linke Hand und hielt sich an der Heizung fest" (with illustrations by Mehrdad Zaeri, 2025).