Lesung mit Dana Vowinckel: "Anton und Alma"

Anton and Alma meet during a student exchange program in Brittany. Years later, they run into each other again at a party. Both are from Berlin and attend the same university—but that’s all they have in common. Anton comes from a family of academics; Alma grew up with her mother and her unloving stepfather on the eastern outskirts of the city. Anton is Jewish. Alma is not. Yet the two fall in love, move in together, argue, and make up, until Anton leaves for New York to write his master’s thesis on the mass conversion of the Khazars to Judaism. Alma is left alone and seeks solace in Anton’s congregation. It is only the events of October 7, 2023, and the Gaza War—along with the polarized atmosphere both on campus and within his own family—that prompt Anton to return to Alma, finding comfort and refuge with her. But then a deep chasm opens up, and the hope for happiness seems farther away than ever.

*Anton and Alma* tells the story of a great love in an increasingly divided world. It is a story of the longing for sincerity and security, of grief and loss, of faith and belonging—and of all of our attempts to give meaning to life. A heart-wrenching, courageous novel about what it means to be human.

Dana Vowinckel was born in Berlin in 1996 and studied linguistics and literature in Berlin, Toulouse, and Cambridge. Her acclaimed debut novel *Gewässer im Ziplock* won the Ravensburger Foundation’s Family Novel Prize, the German Business Literature Prize, and the Mara Cassens Prize; it was nominated for the Leipzig Book Fair Prize, translated into several languages, and adapted for the stage. For *Anton und Alma*, she received, among other honors, the Annual Fellowship from the German Literature Fund. She lives in Berlin.

Moderator: Emily Grunert, Literaturbüro NRW

Partner:DüsseldorferVolksbühne e.V. – Kultur am Rhein