Tune in for narratives critical to our times. Listen, ask and seek answers.
Jonaki Ray
Jonaki Ray was educated in India and the United States, and is now a poet, writer and editor based in New Delhi. Honours for her work include the Iceland Writers Retreat Alumni Award in 2019 and the Pushcart Prize (Zoetic Press, USA) as well as the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem (Oxford Brookes Poetry Center, UK) nominations in 2018. Jonaki's work has been widely published in numerous journals, newspapers and anthologies. Her poems are forthcoming and have been published by Poetry Foundation and Sahitya Akademi and elsewhere.
Session
The Sad Guest
Matthias Nawrat in conversation with Jonaki Ray
How can the individual come into harmony with the knowledge of his own fragility? The first-person narrator in The Sad Guest, the latest work from renowned German author Matthias Nawrat, must grapple with just this eternal question. Through his encounters with an existential architect, a struggling, alcoholic ex-doctor, and other recollections of his travels, this narrator encourages us to explore the space of possibility between loss of homeland, euphoria of departure, and ceaseless longing. In conversation with poet Jonaki Ray, Matthias Nawrat discusses his portrait of the conflicts of the modern condition, and guides us through the influences and intricacies within his latest novel.