Buchpräsentation: "Sara Mesa: Die Familie"

In the organizer's words:

There are no secrets in this family. Everyone puts on an act, pretends, conceals, invents little lies. Sara Mesa's exploration of the inner world of the family - relentless, oppressively precise, as eerily familiar as the shadows in a child's bedroom at night.

A seemingly ordinary family: father, mother, two sons, two daughters. The father Damián is a lawyer, socially committed, worships Gandhi and despises idioms. A man of clear ideas, he brings up his wife Laura and children Damián, Rosa, Martina and Aqui to be disciplined and thrifty, considerate and completely open.

The consequence: everyone else tries in their own way to escape the unventilated atmosphere of control and tense silence. They silently rehearse the rebellion, look for ways out, develop secret codes or undermine the rigid rules by over-fulfilling them.

In ambiguous scenes and from different perspectives, Sara Mesa tells the story of how family relationships shape a lifetime. A hypnotic novel about serious games of hide-and-seek, the lies of parents, the gentle terror of the well-intentioned and the shame that remains: we can't get rid of "The Family".

The Instituto Cervantes Hamburg invites you to a presentation of this novel by the renowned Spanish author Sara Mesa, who will be present in person. The event will be moderated by Dr. Paul Ingendaay, who will also translate the novel into German, so that both German and Spanish-speaking audiences will have access to the novel's multi-layered themes.

"The Family" was translated into German by Peter Kultzen and published by Klaus Wagenbach Verlag, and has received great acclaim in both Spain and Germany. This reading offers a unique opportunity to experience Sara Mesa in person and to reflect on the profound impact of family relationships on our lives.

Sara Mesa is one of the most widely read Spanish authors of our time. She has written several award-winning, critically acclaimed novels, short story collections and essays. Her novel "A Love" was named the best book of the year by 'El País', among others, and was awarded the 2021 Independent Book Trade Prize. The Family was on the bestseller list in Spain for weeks.

Price information:

Registration: cultham@cervantes.es