After the execution of their mother in the tumult of the Iranian revolution, eleven-year-old Saam and his little brother Nima flee to Germany with their father. Doubly alienated in Arab-dominated Neukölln, the father ekes out a life between driving a cab, playing backgammon and shame, while Saam tries to fill the role of head of the family. He fights with all means to gain respect among the brutal street gangs in order to protect his brother Nima. Until one day he goes too far.
In his debut novel, Behzad Karim Khani writes about the complicated fates of revolutionaries, petty thieves, and knife thieves, developing a sound all his own that echoes both the melancholy of Iranian prose and the harshness of African-American rap.
Behzad Karim Khani was born in Tehran in 1977, his family moved to Germany in 1986. He studied media studies and now lives in Berlin-Kreuzberg, where he writes and runs the Lugosi Bar.
The moderator
Leila Haghighat is a cultural worker in Berlin and PhD candidate at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Her work and research focuses on socially engaged art as relational work, solidarity, (urban) spaces, institutions and representation from a postcolonial perspective. She is a member of bildungsLab*, a collective of feminist migrant academics* and/or academics* of color (
bildungslab.net).
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