Description
Village Buchklub - Kleinstadtnovelle (Small-Town Novella) (1980) – by Ronald M. Schernikau
Hosted by Nils Philipp
With their Kleinstadtnovelle (Small-Town Novella), written at the age of just 19, Ronald Schernikau creates a subtle, often painful psychological portrait of a province that is less a place than a condition of being. In the year of its publication, 1980, he himself moves to West Berlin—a biographical step that feels like a quiet continuation of the departure already inherent in the text.
From the perspective of an adolescent, he shows how desire, language, and a sense of self come into friction with the conventions of the surrounding environment. The tone remains peculiarly suspended: between tenderness and distance, irony and seriousness. Schernikau is less interested in accusation than in precise observation—how confinement inscribes itself, how deviation tentatively takes shape.
Thus, the small town becomes a stage for a quiet struggle for expression and attitude between puberty and adulthood. A late-adolescent coming-of-age novel.
Nils Philipp is an art and architecture educator as well as a poet, photographer and decorator. After gaining insightful experiences as a janitor, lifeguard and deli vendor, he now works, among other things, as a bookseller. While he is waiting for his breakthrough as writer or art director, he reads plenty and with pleasure.
About the Village Book Club
• Book lovers and bookworms have been meeting on a bimonthly basis to discuss works of fiction and non-fiction (novels, biographies, and essays) focused on or related to LGBTQIA+ themes and personalities.
• Anticipating insightful discussions, we choose the next book two months in advance.
• While the evening discussions are conducted in German, participants are welcome to read the selected books in their preferred language.
• Free event without registration
** This event is part of the we are village program ‘Belonging versus Lonelines‘, with the support of LADS.
Learn more about the program here.
