Reading & Discussion as part of the Jewish Culture Days | Moderator: Jens Lippert (RISSE/Literaturhaus Rostock)
No family history is complete without gaps. How do you stay in touch with one another and with your shared roots when families leave their homeland and scatter across continents?
At the funeral of her legendary grandmother Sweety, Anna decides to set out in search of her family’s untold stories. With a recorder in her luggage, she travels to New York and Boston, to Arad and Haifa, and visits distant relatives, college classmates, and friends of her grandparents. In strangers’ kitchens, small living rooms, and large nursing homes, she listens intently: every story entrusted to her is about farewells, emigration, and the many different ways of settling in. Each conversation bears witness to the unique life journey of an individual. And yet they all share Anna’s story and form the fabric of an epic novel about Soviet-Jewish life in the 20th century.
Anna Schapiro, born in Moscow in 1988, moved to Germany with her parents in 1992. She studied fine arts in Dresden and Jewish studies in Stockholm. Work and fellowship stays have taken her to New York, Warsaw, London, and Mexico, among other places. She exhibits internationally and teaches at various universities and colleges. Schapiro was co-curator of the exhibition “Class Issues—Art and Its Conditions of Production” (2022) at the Berlinische Galerie, as well as founder and co-editor of the magazine Jalta—Positions on Contemporary Jewish Life.
Advance tickets: 8 € plus fee at the Press Center/at mvticket.de; at the door: 12 €
Reduced rate: 5 € for members of Literaturhaus Rostock e.V., students, WarnowPass holders, people with severe disabilities, and holders of a Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Volunteer Card—please register at reservierung (at) literaturhaus-rostock(dot)de
Culture Ticket for students at the University of Rostock, hmt Rostock, and the University of Applied Sciences Wismar—please register at reservierung (at) literaturhaus-rostock(dot)de
Location: Literaturhaus Rostock (in the Peter-Weiss-Haus), Doberaner Str. 21, 18057 Rostock
A joint event organized by the Jewish Community of Rostock and the Literaturhaus Rostock as part of the 2026 Jewish Culture Days in Rostock
