Reading with Lena Schätte "Das Schwarz an den Händen meines Vaters" moderated by Marlen Kriemann, cultural scientist
Lena Schätte, born in Lüdenscheid in 1993, made her debut in 2014 with the novel "Ruhrpottliebe". In the years that followed, she worked as a psychiatric nurse in the Ruhr region until she began studying literary writing at the German Literature Institute in Leipzig in 2020. Today, she cares for addicts in Lüdenscheid - and writes. For her novel "Das Schwarz an den Händen meines Vaters", Lena Schätte was awarded the W.-G.-Sebald-Literaturpreis and the Förderpreis Nordrhein-Westfalen; the novel was also longlisted for the German Book Prize 2025.
The first-person narrator is called "Motte" by her father. The father is a worker, gambler and drinker. Motte actually has two fathers: one who can run fast, knows all the hiding places when playing and thinks up an answer to every question. And the other, who is transferred from the factory floor to the office so that he doesn't saw his hand off when he's drunk. And the mother says that all the men in the family were like that with alcohol.
Motte has also been drinking more than is good for her for a long time. Even as a child, she played waitress at the Schützenfest and drank the leftovers until she got warm. Now, as a young woman, she sometimes sleeps in the hallway because she can no longer hit the lock with her key. Her boyfriend supports her, but most of the time he can no longer stand properly himself. Only her brother, who has become an educator, looks after her every day. When her father is diagnosed with terminal cancer, Motte looks for a way to say goodbye - to her father and to alcohol.
"The impact of the carefully unfolding text is immediate." From the citation for the award of the W. G. Sebald Prize
