Daniel Kehlmann: AFRIKA - Buchpräsentation

Daniel Kehlmann: AFRICA - Book Presentation

A colonial order takes shape, while one of its negotiators desperately tries to cover up a personal fraud. In his new novel *Africa*, Daniel Kehlmann takes readers to Berlin in the winter of 1884–85. At Bismarck’s invitation, representatives of European nations, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire gather there to discuss trade, territorial claims, and the rules of colonial expansion. African representatives are not present. The final act serves as the basis for the subsequent division of Africa into colonies.

Representing Austria-Hungary at the negotiating table is Legation Councilor Strinetzky, as the ambassador is unable to attend: Franz Liszt has dedicated a piano piece to him that requires practice. Strinetzky himself had transferred a considerable sum of money to a fictitious expert named Dr. Waldbach to finance his affair with an actress. When a real Waldbach shows up in Berlin, the fraud threatens to be exposed. Strinetzky must come up with 5,000 guilders. To make matters worse, a Prussian officer challenges him to a duel in the Grunewald.
Burdened by these worries, Strinetzky wanders through the conference and, under pressure of all things, develops a talent for negotiation. His private panic unfolds in the polished language of diplomacy. The novel shows how responsibility can dissolve into procedure. Its humor focuses on the banality with which history is made.

Following *Lichtspiel*, Kehlmann once again chooses a historical setting in which an individual becomes part of a political catastrophe without grasping its full scope. Daniel Kehlmann reads from *Afrika*. The discussion will focus on how literature transforms historical reality and brings the colonial past into the present.

Daniel Kehlmann, born in Munich in 1975, lives in Berlin and New York. With *Die Vermessung der Welt* (*Measuring the World*), he achieved one of the greatest successes in contemporary German-language literature. “Tyll” was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2020; the English edition of “Lichtspiel” was also shortlisted in 2026 and caused an international sensation. Daniel Kehlmann lives in New York and Berlin.