Two stories, two current crisis areas, two scenarios trying to understand what is happening via literary role models.

The book provides two new stories by Wolfgang Heyder, Penthesiela Moabit and Sewastopol, which complement each other.

In Penthesiela Moabit, a German-Kurdish woman who grew up in Berlin decides to travel to Turkey to learn more about the fate of her father, who disappeared from her life without leaving a note when she was seven years old. In 2014, she resolves to join the YPJ, the women's defense units of the Kurdish YPG, to fight for a Kurdish state in the battle against the IS. The story is a novella in the traditional sense, following in the footsteps of Heinrich von Kleist in an attempt to transfer the premises of his play Penthesilea to the present day.

The second story, Sewastopol, is a collage. A man sits in a basement during the first months of the Ukraine war. He reflects on his life and that of his family. He has three sons who are fighting as soldiers on the front lines, a daughter-in-law who lives in Berlin, where he accompanied his granddaughter Nadja before deciding, against the express wishes of his family, to return to the war zone.

In this story, too, the events of the war are illuminated against the investigative scope of literature, especially from the perspective of the Iphigenia story.

Further information

Author: Wolfgang Heyder