Hanoi Grapevine » Writers in Residence

Writers in Residence

October 2010, Hanoi & HCMC

Ingo Schulze, Julie Zeh

Ingo Schulze

Julie Zeh

Ingo Schulze is one of the most important German-language writers today. Born in Dresden in 1962, he has lived in Berlin since 1993.

His stories deal with daily life in east and west Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. With a sharp sense for the absurd and comical sides of life between the spheres of east and west, he investigates the unavoidable conflicts and misunderstandings on both sides during and after reunification. His most recent novel, ‘Adam and Evelyn’ tells the tragicomic story of a young tailor and designer who reluctantly follows his girlfriend over the Hungarian border into the ‘golden’ West shortly before the fall of the Wall.

The novel ‘Adam and Evelyn’ is currently being translated into Vietnamese and in the autumn of 2010 Ingo Schulze will give readings in Vietnam. At the same time he will gather his impressions of Vietnam during his writer’s journey in a travel diary which will itself later be published in Vietnamese.

Juli Zeh
In 2010 the German writer Juli Zeh, along with Ingo Schulze, also casts her eye on Vietnam. A lawyer and literary scholar, she made her literary debut with “Adler und Engel” (Eagle and Angel), which has been translated into almost 30 languages, and was also very successful with “Spieltrieb” and “Schilf”. In addition to her novels, Zeh has also written a travel diary “Die Stille ist ein Geräusch” (Silence is a Sound) about Bosnia-Herzegovina as well as numerous essays for major German newspapers. She wishes to report in the style of a travel diary on her impressions of Vietnam, gathered as she travels by train from Hanoi to HCMC.