Reading: “A Formality in Kiev”

On Thursday, March 31, 2022, at 7 PM at the German Emigration Center

In response to the war in Ukraine, writer Dmitrij Kapitelman from Kyiv has been invited for a reading from his new book ‘A Formality in Kyiv.’ The reading will take place on Thursday, March 31, 2022, at 7:00 PM at the German Emigration Center. The writer was invited by the Menorah – liberal Jewish community Bremen/Bremerhaven, the Jewish Cultural Association, and the Cultural Office.

The book tells the moving story of a family that once moved abroad full of hope to start a new life and now faces a pile of cats and a mysterious illness. Narrated with the bittersweet humor of a son who stoically tries to become German. Dmitrij Kapitelman can navigate bureaucracy better than the official at whose office he applies for a German passport. After 25 years as a compatriot, most of his life. But no detail is too small for bureaucracy when it comes to immigrants. Ms. Kunze demands an apostille from Kyiv. So he travels to his birthplace, to which he has no connection other than childhood memories. Beautiful those memories, as they hold loving, infallible parents. And heavy, as the family is currently estranged. Until fate reunites them in Kyiv.

Dmitrij Kapitelman / Image rights: © Christian Werner

Dmitrij Kapitelman was born in 1986 in Kyiv, came to Germany as a contingent refugee with his family at the age of eight. He studied in Leipzig and graduated from the German School of Journalism in Munich. Today, he works as a freelance journalist. In 2016, his first successful book ‘The Smile of My Invisible Father’ was published, with which he won the Klaus-Michael Kühne Prize.

Following the reading, Mircea Ionescu, chairman of the Menorah community, will lead a conversation with Dmitrij Kapitelman.

Admission is free.