Charly Hübner reads "If you knew what I know ... The author of my life" / A tribute to Uwe Johnson, a declaration of love to reading
The wall has only just fallen. In Neustrelitz in Mecklenburg, 19-year-old Charly Hübner leaves his parents' house in a dispute. He finds refuge in the theater and literature, reads obsessively and almost inevitably ends up with the novel "Anniversaries" by Uwe Johnson. He immerses himself in it - and does not reappear for a very long time.
40 years after Johnson's death, Charly Hübner read Johnson's magnum opus as an audio book. Once again, he immersed himself completely in it and was amazed at how relevant it still is - both in literary and political terms.
It was more by chance that the massive book club edition of "Anniversaries" ended up in Charly Hübner's new home. A thick tome which, despite the sometimes unwieldy language and convoluted narrative style, exerted a pull on him that he had never experienced before. Someone was talking about the distant place of longing that is New York, and combined this with a family saga in Mecklenburg as a matter of course.
The teenager from back then has become one of the most popular actors in a more or less reunited Germany - while Johnson has increasingly fallen into oblivion. Wrongly so, Charly Hübner believes, because reading this author, a precise observer of his time who put the language and way of thinking of the people around him on paper like no other, is more relevant today than ever.
