About the Stupidity of the Moment

We don’t see the present. Not yet.

What is changing in Germany, Europe or the world right now? Can literature even contribute anything to the awareness of the present? Which role does the past play? And should literature become more political again? Olga Martynova travels to present day Jerusalem and back to the Soviet Union of the 1980s. She meets artists and intellectuals in her hometown of Saint Petersburg and in Crimea, and continually raises the question how literature handles the horrors of time and the tragedies of life. She travels with authors such as Joseph Brodsky, Paul Celan, Ossop Mandelstam and Ovid. Olga Martynova’s essays are focused and finely developed. They are literary border-crossers between present and past, delicate snapshots of a restless world.