Gianna Lange: Und dann springen wir

In the organizer's words:

On the trail of her mother's lost happiness, Rosa travels from northern Germany through Eastern Europe to Mostar, where more than one test of courage awaits her.

"One day we'll come back, and then we'll jump." Mother and daughter had made this promise to each other on the Old Bridge in Mostar, this heartbreakingly beautiful city with a painful history, where her mother had last been happy. But then Elise dies unexpectedly and her daughter Rosa, in her mid-twenties, is left to pick up the pieces of a shattered family history. When her father, who is living with his new family, suddenly seeks contact again, Rosa makes a decision: she wants to leave, to keep the promise she made back then. Thus begins her journey through Eastern Europe, a search for traces of the ruptures in her mother's eventful life. Her adventure takes an unforeseen turn when she meets Emma, who is traveling to Mostar for completely different but equally existential reasons.

"And then we jump" is a wonderfully touching novel about an intense mother-daughter relationship, a novel about grief, consolation and love in all its colors, a search for the meaning of family, a passionate declaration of love to Herzegovina and life.

Gianna Lange, born in Bremen in 1988, studied journalism and transnational literary studies in Bremen and London. She is a founding member of the poetry collective gabrieleschreibtgedichte and the collective for young literature Kollit and a member of the editorial board of the literary magazine Koller.

For the first pages of her manuscript "Und dann springen wir" she received the Bremen Author Scholarship from the Bremer Literaturkontor and the Senator for Culture Bremen. The author lives in Bremen and works at the concert hall Die Glocke and at the Bremen Music Festival.

Moderation: Daniel Schmidt