In the secluded East Germany, Judith Schalansky sat hunched over her parents’ atlas, longing to get away. Her fingers traced journeys over the maps around the world. These journeys inspired her to write Pocket Atlas Over Remote Islands (2009) as an adult. A mixture between atlas, history and personal ruminations, it has been acclaimed for its beautiful language and design.

In 2009, it was awarded the prize of Most Beautiful German Book of the Year and has been described as an idiosyncratic and innovative book both in content and form. It has been translated into over twenty languages.

Last year Schalanskys’ Inventory of Losses (2018) was published in Swedish. It’s a book that critics have struggled categorizing: short stories, essays or archive notes? Nevertheless, the unifying theme is the investigation of lost “things” and relationships. An island vanished in an earth quake, decrepit buildings like East Germany’s Palast der Republik, the verses of Sappho or a long lost Greta Garbo film.

“Berlin is a city blighted by loss. Whenever I order a nineteenth century book at the library I get a note back saying it is unavailable, catalogued as a “war loss”. That gives me goosebumps! The loss somehow becomes tangible by still being catalogued”, Schalansky has said regarding her inspiration for the book.

She uncovers through her writing what lost items leave behind: echoes, covered tracks and phantom pains. All ingredients in what eventually becomes our collective consciousness.

Schalansky has been described as a “marvellous” author, one of the most fascinating in a new German generation. Her fascination with loss can be traced back to her own experience of history, of watching the berlin wall fall as a child. Here, loss became political potential; “it is not the future but the past which feels like the room for opportunity… and thereby the interpretation of the past becomes of the highest concern for any new system of power.” Here Schalansky will be in conversation with Linda Östergaard, literary scholar, editor and translator of, among others, Schalansky’s books.