Iliya Trojanow — "The Lamentations of Zeno" and Climate Change
When:
Wednesday, May 25, 2016 7:00p -
9:00p
Wednesday, May 25, 2016 7:00p -
9:00p
Where:
Goethe-Institut Boston
170 Beacon Street
Boston, Massachusetts 02116
Admission:
$5
Categories:
Art, Lectures & Conferences
Event website:
http://www.goethe.de/ins/us/bos/ver/en15370030v.htm
The Lamentations of Zeno (translated by Philip Boehm, Verso Books, 2016) is a literary fiction about climate disaster and a scientist imploding on a journey to the Antarctic. Zeno Hintermeier is a scientist working as a travel guide on an Antarctic cruise ship, encouraging the wealthy to marvel at the least explored continent and to open their eyes to its rapid degradation. Now in his early sixties, Zeno bewails the loss of his beloved glaciers, the disintegration of his marriage, and the foundering of his increasingly irrelevant career. Troubled in conscience and goaded by the smug complacency of the passengers in his charge, he starts to plan a desperate gesture that will send a wake-up call to an overheating world.
Ilija Trojanow was born in Bulgaria in 1965. In 1971, his parents fled with him to Germany, where they received political asylum. Half a year later, the family moved to Kenya where his father worked as an engineer. He grew up in Nairobi, studied law and ethnology in Munich, founded the Marino Publishing House (specializing in African literature) in 1989, and in the 1990s travelled extensively through Africa. In 1998, Trojanow moved to Bombay for five years. In 2001, he undertook a three-month long journey on foot through Tanzania, in the footsteps of the explorer Sir Richard Francis Burton. Since then, he has lived in Cape Town and Vienna, taught in St. Louis, Berlin, and Tübingen, and published a number of novels and non-fiction books.
This spring, Trojanow is Max Kade Visiting Professor at Dartmouth College.
