From the medieval tales of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table to the desert-island romances of the Enlightenment, from the works of James Fenimore Cooper, Eugène Sue, Karl May and Robert Louis Stevenson to the bestsellers from the pens of B.Traven and J.R.R. Tolkien and their successors on the contemporary scene, the adventure story has retained its position as one of literature's enduring modes of story-telling. Clearly, it still serves to assuage feelings of deep yearning in today's readers.
In this series of lectures, four of the most significant authors of contemporary German fiction consider the nature of the genre.
In his new novel Die Lieblinge der Justiz ("Justice's Favorites") Jury Andruchowytsch treats his readers to a tale of murder, love and betrayal that spans whole centuries. In his lecture, he reviews the long gestation of the book, focusing on the figure of the "scoundrel as adventurer" - in particular in the Ukraine, that idiosyncratic land in the center of Europe.
Moderator: Prof. Dr. Riccardo Nicolosi, Chair of Slavic Philology (Institute of Comparative Literature, LMU).
Organization: This lecture series is organized by the DFG Research Unit on "The Philology of the Adventure Story" at LMU's Institute of Comparative Literature, in collaboration with the Literaturhaus München.
Registration and costs
All lectures will be streamed. Tickets cost 5 euros (plus 2 euros service charge) and are available via Reservix. For further details, see the following website: Literaturhaus München. This lecture will be given in German.