Die Lücken

Reading and Discussion with Shida Bazyar

“If we had known, what would it have changed? Would our mother have opened the windows and distrusted the sun? Would our father have stopped greeting the old neighbor?” Shida Bazyar

Fresh off winning the 2026 German Book Prize, Shida Bazyar takes a penetrating, in-depth look at provincial life in her new novel, *Die Lücken* (The Gaps). In doing so, she explores the foundations upon which our homeland stands. Heimesbach in the Hunsrück is a fictional town where ninety years of German history are embedded in its walls and the lives of its people, waiting to be remembered and recounted. It is a community that actively conceals its past while simultaneously becoming a refuge for those seeking safety here. Bazyar tells the stories of Jewish families who lost everything, of Nazi profiteers who reinvented themselves as innocent bystanders, and of the Sharifi and Karimpour families, who flee Iran decades later. Shida Bazyar’s debut novel, *It Is Quiet at Night in Tehran*, has won multiple awards and was nominated for the International Booker Prize. She was also awarded the Wilhelm Raabe Literature Prize for *The Gaps*.