ANSWER TO GEORGE SAUNDERS

For decades I was locked in a dictatorial system. My political views were inappropriate. Under these circumstances, it was impossible to get in possession of a passport and travel the world. I wanted to live in Paris and discover the Lost Generation Writers’ traces, follow their steps, write and measure myself with the world. The gates of the world were closed to me. But I opened them for myself through the power of imagination and the power of reading and writing. With the help of books, literature, and art, I have traveled through the world and time. That saved my life, my soul, my sanity. I have overcome, and I am living in Berlin nowadays. Berlin is my Paris.

When life threatened to choke me, I read Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast. That gave me strength, an infinite amount of power, to overcome threats, deprivations, and fears and hold on to my life. And my writing. Hemingway wasn’t the only one. The compass, which was supposed to show me the direction, moved tirelessly in all directions. From east to west. From south to north. I would mention Gertrude Stein and Virginia Woolf as part of this directed travel. Faulkner. Camus. Tolstoy, Chekhov, Dostoievski. And so many others!

Books offered me a parallel world I could live in and escape reality. But after a while, books also taught me to see beauty and bliss in every moment of life. In everything that surrounds me. To recognize the beauty in every aspect of life, even in the most frugal or dangerous moments. It was an important lesson that changed my attitude from seing myself as a victim to a person that was learning to master her own state of mind. It made me understand that mastering your state of mind and your emotions means freedom. Inner freedom. Something that no one ever can take away from you.