At first glance, Dunkelblum is a small town like any other. But behind the façade of the Austrian community lies the story of a terrible crime. Their knowledge of the event has bound the older Dunkelblumers together for decades—as has their silence about the crime and the perpetrator. In the late summer days of 1989, while hundreds of GDR refugees are already waiting behind the nearby border with Hungary, a mysterious visitor arrives in town. That's when things suddenly start to move: A skeleton is unearthed in a meadow on the outskirts of the town and a young woman disappears. Haunting traces of the old crime emerge—and confront the Dunkelblumers with a past they had long thought settled. In her new novel, Eva Menasse sketches a large historical panorama using the example of a small town that repeatedly becomes the scene of world politics, and tells of how the inhabitants deal with a historical debt. Dunkelblum is an eerily funny epic about the wounds in the landscape and the souls of the people, which, unlike memory, do not fade away.

Eva Menasse (born 1970 in Vienna) began as a journalist and made her debut in 2005 with the family novel Vienna. This was followed by novels and short stories (Lässliche Todsünden, Quasikristalle, Tiere für Fortgeschrittene), which have been translated many times and won numerous awards. Eva Menasse has received the Heinrich Böll Prize, the Friedrich Hölderlin Prize, the Jonathan Swift Prize, the Austrian Book Prize, the Mainzer Stadtschreiber Prize, and the Villa Massimo Fellowship in Rome. She is also increasingly active as an essayist, for which she received the Ludwig Börne Prize in 2019.

With a musical performance by İdil Pulat (Violoncello).

Presented in German. Registration is required; admission is free.