Nimm die Alpen weg

Author Ralph Tharayil reads from his debut novel “Take Away the Alps” at Habibi Kiosk. The novel tells the story of a childhood in Switzerland in pictures: There is the nameless brother and sister who speak in chorus. There is a home with Ma and Pa, who appear like a deity with their four arms. There is the speed of the bicycles with which the children ride out to their games: to the telephone booth, to the garbage dump, to the reeds. And there is the arrival of a new child in the class, who paves a way for the siblings out of their own inner mountains.

In lyrical, lucid prose, Ralph Tharayil develops an incomparable coming-of-age story that tells of the forms and deformations of the experience of integration, and of the language and bodies that resist that experience.

The reading will be accompanied by a conversation moderated by Dîlan Z. Çapan.

Ralph Tharayil was born in Switzerland in 1986 as the son of Indian migrants. Studied history, media and literature in Basel, while working as a journalist, author, performer and musician, and later as a copywriter for advertising agencies in Hamburg. He writes prose, radio plays and poetry that have appeared in anthologies and journals and have won several awards, including the prize for prose at the 25th open mike. With his novel project “Nimm die Alpen weg” he was invited to the LCB’s Author’s Workshop and received the Alfred Döblin Scholarship. “Nimm die Alpen weg” was awarded the Alfred Döblin Medal 2023 and appeared on the SWR Bestenliste July/August 2023. Ralph Tharayil lives in Berlin.