A BRIDGE BETWEEN
Rights sold to: France
In the auditorium of a primary school, there is an ancient Vietnamese wooden doll on display – children and teachers alike are enchanted. Within a year, one of the coolest neighbourhoods of Berlin goes topsy-turvy: Berlin’s hipster area discovers its Asian character and its anarchic-creative soul comes alive. Bamboo bridges are put up between houses, guards in parking lots wear Vietnamese hats, exotic vegetables begin to grow on waste land, and there is a medical doctor who is on Sunday duty to attend to his patients from the Far East.
Finally Ho-Chi_Minh-Flag is hoisted on the roof, and everything culminates in the biggest street party the neighbourhood has ever seen: a splendid theatrical performance in a duck pond, with Vietnamese water puppets!
Everything begins at a convenience store run by Sung, who is actually a trained archaeologist. Here, former Vietnamese workers meet citizens of the former GDR. The convenience store supplies not only fruits and vegetables, but also instructs inhabitants in the high art of improvisation. An utopian idea, of course. But a highly contagious one.
«An impressive debut novel. Poetic, pragmatic, full of details and profoundly elaborated, deeply rooted in reality, but nevertheless permeated with visionary imagery«, Buchkultur
«The diction is effortless, optimistic and simply beautiful«, Der Freitag
«Karin Kalissa describes charmingly and humorously, but without finger wagging how rewarding a multicultural coexistence is.«, Neues Deutschland
«So effortlessly and dynamically narrated, so pleasant and warm – it leaves you wondering why there are not more often such wonderful little books to be found.» NDR Kultur