Books under constitutional protection, books on TikTok, books in the age of AI – authors in their writing rooms, out and about with their finger on the pulse, a readership in constant flux: What stories are today’s authors telling? Our series, with a new title but a long tradition at the Volksbühne – once Nachtcafé, Lesezone, then Lesebühne, Literatur, and more recently Parole:Text – is entering its next round. Ilija Matusko kicks things off with Jugo.
Jugo is a moving portrait of father and son. A declaration of love to a father who is at once distant and close. And whose return to his old homeland was even harder than his arrival in a foreign country. With great empathy, Ilija Matusko explores the past – both the personal and the collective – and tells a story about family and the conflicts in a crumbled Yugoslavia. And he analyses the feeling that connects father and son: that of never truly fitting in.
Ilija Matusko lives and works in Berlin. . He has received numerous grants for his work, including a grant from the Fritz-Hüser Institute for Literature and Culture of the Working World and a residency at Villa Aurora in Los Angeles. In 2023, Verdunstung in der Randzone was published by edition suhrkamp. Jugo is his debut novel.