NIMM PLATZ - KÖLNER LITERATURSOMMER MIT JOACHIM GEIL

In the organizer's words:

Joachim Geil reads from Heimaturlaub

Where the German Wehrmacht invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, in Ukraine, a war of aggression has been raging again since 2014.

Joachim Geil reads from his debut novel Heimaturlaub: Lieutenant Dieter Thomas has a week's leave from the Eastern Front in the summer of 1944. He travels to visit relatives in the Palatinate. There, the war seems far away, people believe unshakeably in the "final victory" and time flies by in the open-air swimming pool. Dieter quickly sets his eyes on Heidi and Heidi on him. But the idyll is shattered when Dieter is haunted by a memory from the previous winter. His romance with Mashenka in the village of "Malaja Irgendwas" ends with a brutal assault, and Dieter knows only one way out: to save his love by murder. Nice guy on the outside, devastated soul on the inside: the hidden feelings and bottomless fears of a man at war.

The Cologne literary summer is curated by the Cologne literary scene

NIMM PLATZ am Neumarkt is a joint project of Cologne's cultural administration and the independent cultural scene, with contributions from the University of Music and Dance (HfMT) and the Academy of Media Arts (KHM).