Summer 24

What is it like when the familiar world falls apart — when what was normal yesterday no longer applies today?

In Sommer 24, Navid Kermani captures this moment in a single summer: a friend who had recently gone astray politically has taken his own life. Wars are drawing nearer, debates are becoming more strident — and even in private life, everything is slipping away.

Kermani understands our present through its contradictions: he brings the seemingly irreconcilable into conversation and, more importantly, endures the truly irreconcilable. The Theater an der Ruhr is also woven into this panorama: as a space of memory and resonance, where the present meets an early experience of art, doubt, and community.

After graduating from high school, Kermani interned with Roberto Ciulli in Mülheim and later returned as an assistant director and dramaturg. The dialogue never ceased — visible in joint discussions or when Roberto Ciulli brings Kermani's texts to the stage in S wie Schädel (S for Skull).

Navid Kermani (born 1967) is a writer, essayist, and habilitated Orientalist. He gave the keynote speech at the German Bundestag to celebrate 65 years of the Grundgesetz, travels regularly to war and crisis zones as a reporter, and has received numerous awards, including the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, the Kleist Prize, the Hölderlin Prize, and the Thomas Mann Prize.

He became known for publications such as Dein Name (Your Name), Ungläubiges Staunen (Unbelieving Amazement), Jeder soll von da, wo er ist, einen Schritt näher kommen (Everyone Should Take a Step Closer from Where They Are), Entlang den Gräben (Along the Trenches) and Das Alphabet bis S (The Alphabet to S).