ECHO TSCHECHIEN mit ALENA MORNŠTAJNOVÁ

Reading and conversation (in German/Czech): "It Happened in November" 
(German translation by Raija Hauck; Wieser Verlag, 2022)

Prague and other cities in the Eastern bloc of Europe: demonstrations changed the world. But what would it have looked like if the events in 1989 had taken a completely different direction?

It happened in November 1989 in a small Moravian town in Czechoslovakia: Marie and her husband are not particularly politically active people, and yet they get carried away by the events in Prague and also in other cities in the Eastern Bloc and demonstrate for change. Before they even understand what is happening to them, they are arrested and put in a camp. Marie is sentenced to 20 years in prison. She knows she will not see her children grow up, so letters remain her only hope. Her daughter Magdalena is sent to a re-education home where the children are molded to fit the line. One day they meet each other, only for both of them it is not at all like they had imagined.

Marie's fate is representative of many stories that happen somewhere in this world at some point.