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Navid Kermani is not only one of Germany's most distinguished writers and public intellectuals, he is also an outstanding public speaker who mesmerizes audiences with his well-crafted sentences and turns of phrase. Whether he is speaking about the plight of refugees or delivering a eulogy at his father's graveside, Kermani finds words that surprise his listeners, enlighten them, provoke them, disturb them or move them to tears.
As a German of Iranian descent whose parents settled in Germany, Kermani is particularly sensitive to the issues raised by migration and the perceived tensions between Islam and the West. His speeches are a powerful demonstration of how much we stand to gain by adhering to the values of openness, tolerance and mutual respect for the beliefs and practices of those from other cultures who live among us.
List of contents
Editorial Note
Preface
On the Presentation of the Special Award of the Erich Maria Remarque Peace Prize to the Iranian Writers' Association
On the Death of the Unborn Sofía
On the 65th Anniversary of the Promulgation of the German Constitution
On Receiving the Joseph Breitbach Prize
At the Public Commemoration of the Victims of the Paris Attacks
On Receiving the Peace Prize of the German Publishers' Association
Eulogy for Rupert Neudeck
Eulogy for Jaki Liebezeit
On the Twentieth Anniversary of the Founding of the Department of Jewish History and Culture
On Receiving the State Prize of North Rhine-Westphalia
Eulogy for Djavad Kermani
Eulogy for Karl Schlamminger
On the Seventieth Birthday of FC Cologne
In Memory of Egon Ammann
Dinner Speech at the Investment Conference of Flossbach von Storch AG
Keynote Address to the Congress of the International Association for Analytical Psychology
Statement before the Opening Reading of the Harbour Front Literature Festival
On Receiving the Hölderlin Prize of the City of Bad Homburg vor der Höhe
On a Concert by the WDR Symphony Orchestra in the Broadcast Series 'Music in Dialogue'
Epilogue: On My Bookseller, Ömer Özerturgut
Notes
About the author
Navid Kermani is a writer and scholar who lives in Cologne, Germany. He has received numerous accolades for his literary and academic work, including the 2015 Peace Prize of the German Publishers' Association, Germany's most prestigious cultural award.
Summary
Navid Kermani is not only one of Germany's most distinguished writers and public intellectuals, he is also an outstanding public speaker who mesmerizes audiences with his well-crafted sentences and turns of phrase. Whether he is speaking about the plight of refugees or delivering a eulogy at his father's graveside, Kermani finds words that surprise his listeners, enlighten them, provoke them, disturb them or move them to tears.
As a German of Iranian descent whose parents settled in Germany, Kermani is particularly sensitive to the issues raised by migration and the perceived tensions between Islam and the West. His speeches are a powerful demonstration of how much we stand to gain by adhering to the values of openness, tolerance and mutual respect for the beliefs and practices of those from other cultures who live among us.
Report
"Navid Kermani is a brilliant scholar and public intellectual, a perfect diasporic figure in that he is both fully German and deeply engaged with the Iranian Muslim culture that he inhabits with full critical commitment. These are speeches that will change the way that people see the world, especially the world of Iran."
Daniel Boyarin, author of The No-State Solution: A Jewish Manifesto
"Navid Kermani's essays and speeches have established themselves as some of the most brilliant and wide-ranging statements of any German public intellectual. Whether reflecting on politics and the state or mourning his late father, Kermani knows how to be both a public figure and a moving private individual. To read him is to be in touch with both the nerve-ends of modern Europe and its manifold links to the Orient."
Jeremy Adler, King's College London
"Navid Kermani has established himself as one of Germany's foremost public intellectuals... He has the preacher's skill of connecting the personal and the general, and of using each occasion as an opportunity to say what he feels needs to be said at that moment without its seeming forced or arbitrary."
Times Literary Supplement
