Matthias Goeritz

Professor of Practice of Comparative Literature
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    • MSC 1107-146-100
    • Washington University
    • One Brookings Drive
    • St. Louis, MO 63130-4899
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    Matthias Göritz was born in Hamburg in 1969. He studied philosophy and literary studies and spent extended periods in Moscow, Paris and Chicago.

    Göritz was Writer-in-Residence at Bard College, New York, at the “Deutsches Haus” at NYU and guest in the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa, as well as Max Kade Writer at Washington University in St. Louis.

    After publications in magazines, his first volume of poetry, “Loops”, was published in 2001. Matthias Göritz lives in Frankfurt am Main. He was awarded the Hamburg Literature Prize and the Mara Cassens Prize for his first novel “The short Dream of Jakob Voss” (Berlin 2005).

    In Fall 2006 his second collection of poetry, “Pools”, was published.

    Göritz received the grant of the state of Lower Saxonia for these poems.

    He was the Winner of the Warsaw Haiku contest 2008.

    2011 Göritz was awarded the Robert Gernhardt Prize.

    2012 His third collection of poems, “Tools” came out.

    In 2013 the novel “Dreamers and Sinners” was published by C.H. Beck (Munich).

    An American translation is in preparation.

    In 2014 Göritz was the first recipient of the William Gass Award.

    See links below for information about the recent Fabula Festival:

    Opening Ceremony and Reading at  "Fabula Festival on YouTube:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TG8KaR8fFWE&sns=fb

    Additional links:

    Keynote speech Opening DAKAM Conference „Memory and Literature“ in Istanbul 2015  

    Collaboration with turkish poet Efe Duyan

    Excerpts from a Conversation with ‎Slavoj Žižek & Jela Krečič Žižek. "The Birth of Comedy out of the Spirit of Despair"

    Europe and Me

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    Goethe Institute

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    Wikipedia

    Die Sprache der Sonne

    Die Sprache der Sonne

    Die Sprache der Sonne (The language of the sun)

    Young American Lee, restless and newly separated, travels to Istanbul in search of her grandmother's past. As a German Jew, Helene Bischoff escaped persecution by the Nazi regime in the 1930s. At the time, Kemal Atatürk generously offered Jews asylum in Turkey. He had his sights set primarily on intellectuals, engineers, doctors and lawyers who were supposed to help drive Turkey's radical modernization forward.

    In Istanbul, this historic and exuberant megacity between Orient and Occident, Lee discovers that her grandmother's former companion and temporary lover, the journalist and agent Georg Naumann, is still alive, well over a hundred years old. What connects him to Helene and maybe even to her, Lee? In this exciting, multifaceted novel we experience the violence of history, the power of love and Istanbul as a labyrinth and salvation. Knowledgeable and sensual - the new, great novel by Matthias Göritz.   

    Publication date: 1/26/2023 by C.H.Beck in German.

    Parker

    Parker

    In his new novel, Matthias Göritz tells exciting and inscrutable stories of perfidious intrigue, power and love, and of the irresistible lure and price of success. Parker was published by German publisher C.H. Beck in March of 2018.