Dmitrij Kapitelman

In the organizer's words:

A family from Kyiv sells Russian specialties in Leipzig. Vodka, pelmeni, SIM cards, sailor shirts - and a kind of Eastern European feeling of togetherness. Although the latter is no longer available since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The mother is on Putin's side. And her son, who loves no language more than Russian, no person more than his mother, but also no city more than Kyiv, is in despair. It is not wise of him to return to Ukraine in the middle of the war. But what should he do if there is no other way to get his mother back from fascism and the crazy Russian television lies? A book that only Dmitry Kapitelman can write: tragic, tender and funny at the same time.

Dmitrij Kapitelman, born in Kiev in 1986, came to Germany with his family at the age of eight as a "contingent refugee". He studied political science and sociology at the University of Leipzig and graduated from the German School of Journalism in Munich. Today he works as a freelance journalist. His first, successful book "Das Lächeln meines unsichtbaren Vaters" (My Invisible Father's Smile) was published in 2016, for which he won the Klaus-Michael Kühne Prize. This was followed in 2021 by "Eine Formalie in Kiew", for which he was awarded the Ravensburger Verlag Foundation's Family Novel Book Prize.