Anyone interested in literature is welcome to stop by without registering. The event is free.

About the event:

Fleeing the Germans, Walter Benjamin traveled in September 1940 along an old smugglers’ trail from the French border town of Banyuls-sur-Mer to Portbou in northern Spain. The next day, he took his own life. Eight decades later, Marica Bodrožić takes the great German writer and philosopher’s final journey as an opportunity to reflect on our times, the complexity of life stories and identity, friendship, and flight. For her, the trek across the Pyrenees becomes a lucid journey of thought, in which nature speaks as a synesthetic tapestry. The external world of the mountains merges with the inner landscape of life. Marica Bodrožić artfully weaves into her stream of consciousness the fates of other intellectuals who were exposed to the violence of the 20th century—such as the resistance fighter Lisa Fittko or the poet Ossip Mandelstam. The result is a timeless journey through the inner landscapes of the soul, linking memory—interlaced with pain—with the luminous core of poetry.

The paperback was published on August 12, 2026.