Bonus episode Current Literary Affairs

In this bonus episode Read My World’s editor Canan Marasligil speaks with Hengameh Yaghoobifarah about trauma and resilience, racism and white fragility, and living a queer migrant life in Germany.

Hengameh Yaghoobifarah is a Berlin based journalist and author. They are famous for their columns in newspaper Taz, in which they challenge the German self-image of a tolerant and colorblind society, being both funny and razor sharp, not shying away from controversy.

The episode was recorded at the book launch of the Dutch translation of Hengameh’s novel Ministry of Dreams, which was universally lauded in the German press. In the book we follow Nas, a young queer woman, whose world suddenly shatters when her sister Nushrin dies in a car crash. The sisters survived a lot together: their flight to Germany from Iran, the loss of their father, their emotionally distant mother. Now that Nushrin is dead, Nas takes in her sister’s teenage daughter and tries to understand what has happened to her. Was it an accident, was it suicide? What secrets did her sister keep from her?

Current Literary Affairs is a podcast in English by SLAA and Read My World. This is the fourth episode.