David Wagner’s novel Verkin takes the reader on an adventure from the Bosporus through Türkiye and across three continents, on a search for clues between Orient and Occident, deep into the tumultuous 20th century. It is the story of a peculiar friendship and of an extraordinary woman.

A cat is brought to Berlin from Lake Van in Anatolia, a cat with one blue and one brown eye. At the welcome party given in its honor, the novel’s narrator meets the person who brought the cat and asks himself: Who is this Turkish-Armenian woman named Verkin who looks like an astronaut in her shiny metallic dress? Soon he travels to Istanbul himself to work on a new book, carrying in his luggage various German meat products as gifts to Verkin in return for the cat. No sooner has he arrived than he is being seduced: by the stories from her almost fairy-tale life. Together the two drive through the city and across the Bosporus, they travel to the Lycian coast, visit the ruins of thermal baths, roll through Anatolia in the dining car, and eventually reach Lake Van on the Iranian border. Verkin tells of her childhood in Istanbul and of her ancient Armenian family; of grandmothers who in 1915 survived the killings and displacements, and of her father, who built the largest electricity company in Türkiye; of Swiss boarding schools and of Paris in 1968; of lucrative deals in East Berlin and of artist circles in New York City in the 1970s; of her men, among them two Germans; and of a nearly fatal accident that sent her on a yearslong odyssey, of her commitment to the Armenian heritage; of her struggle against patriarchy and of her political work; of a country and a life full of contradictions.

Born in 1971, David Wagner made his literary debut with the novel Meine nachtblaue Hose. He has since published many other books, including a collection of short stories, Was alles fehlt, a volume of prose writings, Spricht das Kind, the essay collections Welche Farbe hat Berlin and Mauer Park, the childhood memoir Drüben und drüben (with Jochen Schmidt), the novel Vier Äpfel, which was long-listed for the German Book Prize, and Ein Zimmer im Hotel. He was awarded the Leipzig Book Fair Prize for Leben in 2023; the following year he received the Kranichsteiner Literaturpreis and was the inaugural Friedrich Dürrenmatt Guest Professor for World Literature at the University of Bern. In 2019, Der vergessliche Riese won him the Bavarian Book Prize as well as a place on the shortlist for the Wilhelm Raabe Literature Prize. His books have been translated into many languages. He lives in Berlin.

Presented in German
Featuring a musical performance by Eda Seviniş (piano), student at the Barenboim-Said Akademie