26 March 2019

Book Release:
“Baba, wie lange fahren wir noch? Erzählungen”
Publication of the narration partner project “Our Stories – Rewrite the Future” by young refugees and German-speaking authors

The newly released publication Baba, wie lange fahren wir noch? Erzählungen (Baba, how much longer 'til we get there? Stories) is the culmination of an unusual Akademie der Künste project: Teenagers and young adults, who have fled their homes and come to Germany, have teamed up with the authors Shida Bazyar, Larissa Boehning, Henning Fritsch, Ralph Hammerthaler, Kerstin Hensel, Sabine Peters, Katerina Poladjan and Senthuran Varatharajah to create storytelling partnerships for the project “Our Stories – Rewrite the Future”. In this partnership, one person told their story while the other listened and transformed it into a work of prose.
From these intensive encounters, which continued for over a year, 17 literary accounts have been documented about flights to and through Europe, about arriving in a new place, the loss of homeland and family, but also about memories of the horrors of war, persecution and torture.

The Akademie der Künste's narration partner project “Our Stories – Rewrite the Future” began in December 2016, as part of that year's main focus programme Uncertain States. In a variety of workshops the authors collaborated with their respective partners to develop questions and strategies related to the motifs, images and ideas for writing new, fictional accounts that go beyond individual biographies.
The stories that emerged have been brought together on the website www.rewrite-the-future.de and the Akademie der Künste has recently published them as the book Baba, wie lange fahren wir noch? Erzählungen.

The project is funded by the Deutscher Literaturfonds.

Publication
Baba, wie lange fahren wir noch? Erzählungen
Akademie der Künste, Berlin, 2019 256 pages (in German) ISBN 978-3-88331-233-0, € 12 With texts by Shida Bazyar, Larissa Boehning, Henning Fritsch, Ralph Hammerthaler, Kerstin Hensel, Sabine Peters, Katerina Poladjan, Senthuran Varatharajah

To request a review copy: presse@adk.de, Tel. + 49 (0)30 200 57-1514