
Flowers for Otello
On the Crimes That Came Out of Jena
Esther Dischereit(Author)
Seagull Books London Ltd (Publisher)
Published on 6. December 2022
Book
Hardback
172 pages
978-0-85742-984-1 (ISBN)
Description
A powerful performance text that illuminates incidents of anti-immigrant violence in contemporary Germany.
Between 1998 and 2007 a series of killings in Germany, disdainfully styled "doner murders" by the media, were attributed by German police to internecine rivalries among immigrants. The victims included eight citizens of Turkish origin, a Greek citizen, and a German policewoman. Not until 2011 did the German public learn not only that the police had ignored signs pointing to the real perpetrators, a neo-Nazi group called the National Socialist Underground, but also that important files, possibly containing evidence implicating state agencies, had disappeared from the archives of Federal Police and intelligence organizations.
Esther Dischereit, one of the preeminent German-Jewish voices of the post-Holocaust generation, takes that failure of the state to protect its citizens from racist violence as the core of her performance text Flowers for Otello: On the Crimes That Came Out of Jena. Seeking an appropriate language with which to meet the bereaved, she also finds a way to raise the blanket of silence that is used by those who would prefer that we forget. Combining witness testimony, myth, and incidents from a history of violence against minorities, Flowers for Otello, in Iain Galbraith's translation, refuses chaos, instead revealing the chilling, patterned order of tragedy while bringing a great writer's humanism to the fore.
Between 1998 and 2007 a series of killings in Germany, disdainfully styled "doner murders" by the media, were attributed by German police to internecine rivalries among immigrants. The victims included eight citizens of Turkish origin, a Greek citizen, and a German policewoman. Not until 2011 did the German public learn not only that the police had ignored signs pointing to the real perpetrators, a neo-Nazi group called the National Socialist Underground, but also that important files, possibly containing evidence implicating state agencies, had disappeared from the archives of Federal Police and intelligence organizations.
Esther Dischereit, one of the preeminent German-Jewish voices of the post-Holocaust generation, takes that failure of the state to protect its citizens from racist violence as the core of her performance text Flowers for Otello: On the Crimes That Came Out of Jena. Seeking an appropriate language with which to meet the bereaved, she also finds a way to raise the blanket of silence that is used by those who would prefer that we forget. Combining witness testimony, myth, and incidents from a history of violence against minorities, Flowers for Otello, in Iain Galbraith's translation, refuses chaos, instead revealing the chilling, patterned order of tragedy while bringing a great writer's humanism to the fore.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Greenford
United Kingdom
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
Dimensions
Height: 232 mm
Width: 161 mm
Thickness: 20 mm
Weight
340 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-85742-984-1 (9780857429841)
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Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Esther Dischereit has published fiction, poetry, and essays, and is a prolific writer for radio and the stage. In 2009 she was awarded Austria's prestigious Erich Fried Prize. Iain Galbraith's volume of poetry The True Height of the Ear was published by Arc in 2018. He has won numerous prizes for his translations.
Content
Introduction by Preti Taneja
Flowers for Otello: On the Crimes That Came Out of Jena
Flowers for Otello: On the Crimes That Came Out of Jena