How do you tell the story of a family when the common language is lost in the diaspora? When memories are deceptive and beloved relatives have been scattered around the world for generations? In her acclaimed autofictional novel, the great Italian storyteller Igiaba Scego goes in search of traces between Mogadishu and Rome. She tells of mothers who were thought lost and brothers who were found again, of a childhood in Somalia and school in the north of Rome, of the wounds of colonial history that are passed down through the generations – and of the great hope that lies in storytelling.

Igiaba Scego, who is part of the Italian delegation at the Frankfurt Book Fair, is celebrating the German Book Release with us, the Literaturhaus Berlin and S. Fischer Verlag of “Cassandra a Mogadiscio”. On 8 October, she will be talking to translator Verena von Koskull about her novel. The German passages will be read by Marie-Thérèse Fontheim. Simultaneous translation from Italian to German by Johannes Hampel.