Description

The young author Alina Bronsky is the 4th recipient of the Munk-Goethe Writers Residency, which aims to foster German-Canadian exchange on European migration topics. Alina Bronsky, born 1978 in Iekaterinburg/Russia, grew up on the Asian side of the Ural Mountains as well as in Marburg and Darmstadt. After dropping out of her medical studies, she worked as a copywriter and journalist. “Scherbenpark” is her first literary publication and has been released in August 2008.

In cooperation, the Goethe-Institut Toronto and the Munk Centre for International Studies at the University of Toronto created the Munk-Goethe Writers Residency within the regional focus on “Cultures on the Move” as a basis for the long-term collaboration of Canadian, German and international artists, journalists and academics. In 2006 Lena Gorelik has been the residency, 2007 the journalist Dr. Thomas Medicus has been in Canada and in 2008 the author Jagoda Marinić. The residencies resulted in countless texts, new research interests, future conference ideas, new books and new international artistic and academic friendships.

Alina Bronsky, who took part in the Ingeborg Bachmann Competition 2008, will be involved in readings, presentations and discussions with students and Canadian artists as well as in informal meetings. She will read in English and German amongst others in Waterloo, London and at Munk Centre Toronto.

Her debut “Scherbenpark” is about 17-year-old Sascha who came from Moscow to Germany and lives with her younger brother and sister in the Park of Fragments – a ghetto of high-rise buildings ruled by its own laws which she breaks with fierce determination. She visits the Catholic elite high school, which accepted Sascha because of her giftedness and her precarious living conditions. Sascha is a commuter between two worlds and not at home in either of them but sharp-tongued and precocious enough to stand her ground – and to take the reader with her on a constantly accelerating journey.

What the critics are saying about “Scherbenpark” or “Park of Fragments”:

“Most exciting newcomer of the season.“ (Spiegel)

“Electrifying debut“ (Süddeutsche Zeitung)

“A literature, that develops an incredible narrative flow... the text really inspired me.“ (Ijoma Mangold, member of jury at Ingeborg Bachmann Competition Klagenfurter 2008)

“Soon you cannot escape the malestrom of this book. Sascha’s development for all of the easy language is very authentic and maximal psychological advanced to realise...” (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung)