Emmanuel Carrère

The multi-award-winning author Emmanuel Carrère reads from his new book »Kolkhoz«, an impressive family saga in which personal destinies intertwine with the major upheavals of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Emmanuel Carrère reads from »Kolkhoz«
In 2023, Hélène Carrère d’Encausse – France’s most renowned historian of Russia, President of the Académie française and Emmanuel Carrère’s mother – dies, followed shortly afterwards by her husband Louis. Whilst clearing out his parents’ flat, Carrère comes across his father’s extensive genealogical research and begins to trace the stories of life, love and suffering spanning four generations in Russia, Georgia, in German exile and in France.

Family & Contemporary History
The way in which political history can abruptly upend personal history becomes apparent right up to the present day. »Kolkhoz« extends to the war in Ukraine, the outbreak of which Carrère witnessed in Moscow, and the upheavals in Georgia that his cousin, President Salome Surabishvili, has had to face. The emergence of a »gigantic dystopia« and the global bewilderment it has caused once again raise the question of how we narrate our lives. ​

Musical accompaniment by Maximilian Kromer
The pianist Maximilian Kromer will provide musical accompaniment for the evening with works by the Georgian-French composer Nicolas Zourabichvili and other composers. Nicolas Zourabichvili is Emmanuel Carrère’s uncle and one of theprotagonists in his book »Kolchose«, around which the evening is centred. The German reading from the novel will be given by Burgtheater actor Markus Hering. Emmanuel Carrère will read from the book himself in French and talk to Gabriel Proedl about his book. The discussion will take place in French and German and will be interpreted live.