Audio 29

Novelist Maaza Mengiste joins Berlin Review for a live conversation at Chapters Bookshop in Berlin, recorded as part of her time in the city as a fellow at the American Academy.

Mengiste is the author of Beneath the Lion's Gaze and The Shadow King, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2020. In conversation with editor Meret Weber, she discusses the question that runs through all her work: how ordinary do decent people come to do indecent things?

They also talk about the role photography plays both in her writing process and in the world of her characters, from the Italian-Jewish soldier Ettore to the wartime albums of smiling soldiers she found in Italian flea markets.

Maaza Mengiste also discusses her new novel-in-progress, set among the Black Germans, Africans, and other communities living in Berlin in the 1920s and 30s, as the Nuremberg laws took hold. She reflects on bearing witness, small acts of resistance, and writing history for the future rather than the present.

Our thanks to Chapters Bookshop in Moabit for hosting the evening.

Read more at blnreview.de: our recent issue includes a reflection by the Gazan poet Alaa Al-Qaisi on her time at Wannsee, and an essay on William Gardner Smith's 1963 novel The Stone Face.

Airlift is hosted by Tobias Haberkorn and Lauren Oyler. Produced and edited by Kaitlin Roberts.