A Good European

Oliver Rohe has a solicitor tell the story of his client, a German of Lebanese origin. It is an equally familiar and shocking tale of innocence, biased police work, discrimination and radicalisation. Islamist terror appears as a distorted mirror image of interaction with the other.

Adrian Leka casts an elliptical spotlight on everyday life in Albania, a candidate for EU membership. Whether young people or senior citizens, journalists or café-goers: everyone senses conspiracy and surveillance, everything seems to be on the verge of disaster, nowhere are there signs of hope and power to act. A life paralysed under the perceived diktat of adaptation.

Wilfried N’Sondé has written an impromptu about an overnight bus ride from Berlin to Paris. In his story, the narrator witnesses an incident on the periphery, a small drama that makes it clear that freedom of movement no longer applies to everyone, man or woman, in the Schengen area either.

In her story, Zinaida Lindén addresses Europe’s arrogant elevation of its values to the measure of all things - thus rendering those who do not master its codes un-free. Correct, stylish and good enough? Almost impossible for a female Russian academic. Lindén looks at the subtle distinctions that core Europe (still) allows itself to make.

Vladimir Asenijević has written a parable about how Europeans deal with their own privileges. In this work, an insect becomes a symbol of the unknown, the other, the underprivileged. The narrator's reactions - disgust, empathy, compassion, complacency and self-loathing - form a condensation of European arrogance and ineptitude.

Nasrin Siege narrates from the perspective of a little girl who fled Aleppo with her mother. The traumatisation caused by the war in Syria is conveyed very simply through the childlike words. And yet: arrival in Germany brings with it the hope of healing.

As a result of the events of the Second World War, relations within Europe still are unfree and strained. The deeds and experiences of the grandfathers still thwart the harmless holiday flirting of their adolescent grandchildren. The connection between history and desire is still a tense balancing act.

After his dream of a zoo in the Bulgarian province has come true - thanks to friendship with socialist-dictatorial fraternal states in Africa - his animals become the victims of hungry neighbours in post-communism. A biting parable on the emotional state of a victim of the turn to free-market policies.