Reading series «Das andere Buch an der Uni»
- Emine Sevgi Özdamar reads from "Seltsame Sterne starren zur Erde"
- Library of the University of St. Gallen, under the cupola
- Friday, 7 November 2003, 7.30 pm
- Free entry. Reading in German
About the book
The University of St.Gallen Library has invited Emine Sevgi Özdamar to read from her latest book “Seltsame Sterne starren zur Erde”. Looking amazed and with incredible wit, the author recalls an almost forgotten Berlin in the 1970s. The life of people she shares a flat with in west Berlin’s Wedding district and their east Berlin friends in Pankow, the Turkish immigrants in the neighbourhood, the political events of the “German Autumn”, the daily S-Bahn journeys between the west and the east, important and less important love stories and finally her great love for the Heiner Müller and Benno Besson’s theatre.
The book is the last volume of a trilogy entitled “Das Leben ist eine Karawanserei…” which began in 1992. In the book, she depicts the childhood and adolescence of a girl in Turkey, where tradition and modernity collide. In the novel “The Bridge of the Golden Horn”, published in 1998, she writes about a young Turkish woman in Berlin. She also includes obvious autobiographical sections, such as factory work and stage school.
About the author
Emine Sevgi Özdamar was born in 1946 in Malataya in eastern Turkey. She came to Germany for the first time in 1965 to work in a Berlin factory. Two years later, she returned to Turkey and attended a stage school in Istanbul. As an actress she returned to Germany in 1976 where she worked with Benno Besson as assistant director at the East Berlin Volksbühne theatre. Engagements in Paris, Avignon and Bochum followed. At the same time, Emine Sevgi Özdamar also works for film and television. For example she acted in “Happy Birthday Türke” by Doris Dörrie. In 1991 she received the acclaimed Ingeborg Bachmann Prize.
Emine Sevgi Özdamar is a woman who likes to travel: "I’m a woman without roots. I prefer to sit in a train between countries. The train is a great home."