»The Thin Gods« – Aris Fioretos on an aging musician between bravado and longing for love

Ache Middler, a rock musician in his sixties, lives a reclusive life in Berlin when he receives a letter from a dying woman. Years ago, they spent a night together. Now she asks him to tell their shared daughter his story. Ache reflects back: on his childhood in Delaware and his alcoholic mother, on the rise in the glamorously torn New York of the 1970s, on the perpetual money troubles – and on the three women who shaped him. Over decades, »The Thin Gods« traces the contrasts of a life: between daring masculinity and vulnerability, between independence and love. A novel that pulses with the intoxication of the underground, electrifying and casually melancholic at the same time.

The moderation of the event will be conducted by Prof. Dr. Karin Hoff (CAU Kiel).

Aris Fioretos, born in 1960 in Gothenburg, is a Swedish writer of Greek-Austrian descent. For his translations – including those of Paul Auster, Vladimir Nabokov, and Jan Wagner into Swedish – as well as for his own work, he has received numerous awards; in spring 2024, he will hold the Poetics Lectures in Frankfurt am Main. The author lives in Berlin and Stockholm.

Admission: 12,– / 8,– plus advance booking fee

Organizer: Literaturhaus SH / Institute for Scandinavian Studies, Frisian Studies, and General Linguistics CAU Kiel