The German Crocodile : A Reading & Conversation with Ijoma Mangold скачать в хорошем качестве

The German Crocodile : A Reading & Conversation with Ijoma Mangold

This was a hybrid event: In person (The Diamond, Cripps Court, Selwyn College) & online. Moderation: Dr Tara T. Windsor (Schröder Research Associate, Cambridge) Ijoma Mangold is one of Germany’s leading literary critics whose best-selling literary memoir Das Deutsche Krokodil (Rowohlt, 2018) appeared in English translation in late 2021 (transl. Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp, DAS EDITIONS, Digitalback Books) and was awarded the English PEN Award. In The German Crocodile, Ijoma remembers his childhood, his teenage years and his early adulthood in this compelling coming-of-age memoir of growing up different in 1970s Heidelberg, in the USA as the German Wall fell, and as a young adult in the new Germany. His own story is inextricably linked with that of his mother, a German from the eastern province of Silesia, forced to escape as a refugee in the expulsions from 1944, and to start afresh in utter poverty in West Germany. His Nigerian father came to Germany to train in paediatric surgery but returned before Ijoma was old enough to remember him. His reappearance on the scene 22 years later forces a crash collision with an unknown culture, one he grew up suspicious of, and a new complex family history to come to terms with. We are delighted to welcome Ijoma to Cambridge for a discussion of this book, which will appeal to anyone with an interest in German culture, history and politics, as well as broader, ongoing conversations about the intersections between race, class, identity and belonging. The organisers are grateful for the generous support of the DAAD Cambridge Research Hub for German Studies & the Schröder Fund.