Event as part of the 31st Schwerin Literature Days
WHERE THE DEAD SPEAK – A Reading with Jaroslav Rudiš
Lorenzo, Caspar, and Miss Detroit are on the road in an old Saab. Three friends, somewhere between middle age and weariness of life. Their destination: the cemeteries of Central Europe. While Lorenzo devours books and tries to write a doctoral dissertation on dead European poets, Miss Detroit dreams of becoming a cemetery botanist and talking to the dead through the flowers. And the nearly blind Caspar thinks of his father in the Bohemian Paradise, whose deceased friends still haunt his favorite bar. With every kilometer they drive, the three grow closer to one another and hear the voices of the dead more clearly from grave to grave: What are they talking about? And who is best left unheeded? When they beat some looting Reichsbürger to the punch at a Berlin cemetery and steal the bones of a Nazi criminal, an absurd chase begins along the borders of central Europe.
Jaroslav Rudiš sets out on a fast-paced odyssey and tells a story of friendship, transience, and what binds us together in Europe.
Jaroslav Rudiš, born in 1972 in the Czech Republic, is a writer, screenwriter, and playwright. After several novels were translated into German, his first novel written in German, *Winterberg’s Last Journey*, for the Leipzig Book Fair Prize. He has also been honored for his work with the Usedom Literature Prize, the Literature Houses Prize, and the Chamisso Prize/Hellerau.
Moderator: Kathrin Matern, journalist and bookseller
Friday, October 30, 2026, at
7:30 p.m.
City Library in the Schweriner Höfe, Klöresgang 3
Admission
Box office: 14.00 € / Advance sales: 12.00 € (plus ticket fee)
Click here for TICKETS
Organizer
, Cultural Office of the State Capital Schwerin
