Event
Reading with Jo Lendle

The cardinal points: It is July 2, 1937, Amelia Earhart is flying high above the ocean in her Lockheed Electra. The shadows of the clouds look like islands. She is about to become the first person to fly around the world. This is the most difficult stage. Jo Lendle tells the story of a heroine who doesn't want to be a heroine. Amelia flies, she writes, she sets an example for women. But she struggles with all the attributions because she can't find herself in them, not least in the categories of woman and man. So she takes off and leaves everything behind her, without compromise.
Die Himmelsrichtungen is the portrait of a tremendously courageous, charismatic, headstrong person. It is a love story with changing participants, some amazing, others as fleeting as clouds. And it is a novel about memory and how it gradually unravels. Each layer shows the past in a new light. How else to tell this story but backwards? Amelia doesn't yet know that it's the last day of her life.
As long as I talk, I'm alive. As long as I'm flying. The last certainty I have left: If I never land, I will not have died.(from the novel Die Himmelsrichtungen by Jo Lendle)

Jo Lendle was born in 1968 and studied literature, cultural studies and philosophy. He is the author of several books.

Photo: ©Heike Bogenberger