Once a month, the Lesebürger*innen meet and read texts together. Sometimes we read current novels, sometimes texts by Annette von Droste-Hülshoff - and sometimes we talk about how texts can be read together at all.
In October and November we read the novel Dunkelblum by Eva Menasse: At first glance, Dunkelblum is a small town like any other. But behind the façade of the Austrian community lies the story of a terrible crime. Their knowledge of the event has united the older Dunkelblum residents for decades - as has their silence about the crime and the perpetrator. In the late summer days of 1989, while hundreds of GDR refugees are already waiting behind the nearby border with Hungary, a mysterious visitor arrives in the town. Things suddenly start to move: A skeleton is unearthed in a meadow on the outskirts of the town and a young woman disappears. As if haunted, traces of the old crime emerge - and confront the Dunkelblumers with a past they thought was long gone.
