Correspondence between writers: You are like Angela Merkel

What do you write to someone in whose country some consider poetry a crime? How do you talk to someone who looks out their window as tanks roll by and the Taliban take over the city while you’re watching from the TV, or maybe you’re not even looking? What do you ask someone who says, “My world is centuries away from your world”?

Some books make you wonder why there is anything in them at all: because writing sometimes seems so impossible, so pretentious. Annika Reich and Mirjam Wittig published such a book under the title When I read your words, I find the way back home. It gathers Correspondence between writers, Ukrainian and Iranian, German and Afghan, Italian and Syrian, they write from Kabul or Düsseldorf, Wanne-Eickel or Stockholm. They live in war, in exile, in peace, in oppression, in a democracy, they don’t know each other, often they don’t even share a language. Some have long been known in this country – Judith Hermann, Daniela Dröscher, Mithu Sanyal – while others keep their real names to themselves because otherwise they would be in danger. So do you have anything to say to each other?